Abstract
This article examines levels of time stress reported by people with and without disabilities. Using data at an individual level from the Time Use Survey for Spain in 2002–2003, we estimate an ordered probit model to investigate the determinants of time stress by disability status. We find that disabled individuals work fewer hours, have more free time and engage in more household labour as compared to the non-disabled. The estimation results show that disabled workers (especially those who are severely or moderately limited in their daily activities) suffer from more stress than their non-disabled counterparts. In addition, longer working hours increase the levels of time stress reported by all individuals, but more intensely so among disabled workers.
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Notes
A full description of this project is available at: https://www.h2.scb.se/tus/tus/default.htm.
This question included in the STUS is quite similar to that used in other previous studies on time stress (e.g. Mattingly and Sayer 2006; Hamermesh and Lee 2007). Despite this similarity, we have to take into account how question wording, examples used, interviewer instructions, and interviewer training differ across countries’ surveys and how responses might reflect these differences. In addition, cultural aspects, race/ethnicity issues, and problems of back-translation must be considered. In our case, the STUS follows the “Guidelines on Harmonised European Time Use Surveys”, published by EUROSTAT, which provides a solid methodological basis for the countries conducting time use surveys, and ensures international comparability of all results, thus increasing the value of the data.
Some authors, such as Chirikos and Nestel (1984) and Kreider (1999), have pointed out that self-classification may lead to overestimation (when the individuals try to justify situations of inactivity or limited work activity) or underestimation (when the disability is regarded as a stigma) of the prevalence of disability rates.
See Greene (1997) for a full description of these models. To obtain all estimation results we have used the statistical package STATA 11.
Although we do not include this table with the predicted probabilities for these two categories, it is available upon request.
In addition, we have re-estimated our equations for all individuals (non-disabled + disabled) but now for those who are non-employed. For the indicator “Feeling rushed”, we find that only the coefficients on “severe disability” and “moderate disability” are significant at the 1 % level with respect to the reference person (non-disabled). Concerning the other two subjective indicators, we only find significant differences by disability status for the subjective indicator “Lack of time”. Those non-employed individuals who have a non-limiting or moderate disability are more likely to suffer from “Lack of time”. These regressions are available upon request.
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Pagán-Rodríguez, R. Being Under Time Pressure: The Case of Workers with Disabilities. Soc Indic Res 114, 831–840 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0175-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0175-9