Save the American Time Use Survey (ATUS)
Dear National Policymakers,
The President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2009 budget eliminates funding for the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Launched in 2003, the ATUS is an annual survey that provides the only available information on how Americans use their time. The ATUS provides essential information on how Americans spend all of their time, including time spent engaged in paid work, childcare, home maintenance, volunteer work, commuting, relaxation, and more.
The ATUS is needed to expand our horizons beyond merely charting where dollars go, to charting where time goes too. Statistics on spending, jobs, incomes, and so on are undeniably important. But those statistics don’t give us the complete picture of the value of all of the work that members of our society do. The ATUS is the first step in helping us collect and use information that tells the “rest of the story.”
For more than 20 years Mothers & More has been raising awareness of the issue that all the work mothers do – whether paid or unpaid – has social and economic value. We believe that work needs to be redefined so that there is a broad acceptance that the work of caring for others is valuable and vital work that is essential to our families, communities, economy and society as a whole.
Until our public policies, private practices and cultural attitudes truly reflect the value and importance of unpaid caregiving work, mothers will continue to face higher rates of poverty, greater economic risk, and very real constraints on their ability to meet their own needs, those of their children, and those of their families. Over time women have won access to the paid workplace but mothers have not yet won social change that truly acknowledges the contributions to our economy and society made by the rest of their work – their unpaid caregiving work.
Although the ATUS is a relatively new survey, it has already given many a unique window on ourselves and our society. As an organization, Mothers & More has been looking at and discussing the results of the ATUS with mothers across the country since 2004. We believe the value of this information will continue to grow as more years of data have accumulated. Most other advanced nations in the world collect time use data. If the ATUS is eliminated, American businesses, families, policymakers and researchers will lose out on critical information that can improve the quality of the lives of mothers, children and families, and ultimately improve our society.
We urge you to add $6.0 million to the Fiscal Year 2009 BLS budget to collect ATUS data from the full sample originally planned for the survey or, at the least, to allocate the $4.3 million needed to preserve the program in its current form.
Respectfully,
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