Hello, what time use variables should add up to 1440 minutes?

TIME USE
1

Hello, my question is the same as this:

but I don’t think that answer is correct.

I create total time like this:

gen tottime= bls_carehh+bls_carenhh+bls_comm+bls_educ+bls_food+bls_hhact+bls_leis+bls_other+bls_pcare+bls_purch+bls_social+bls_work

this results in 88% of the full 2003-2016 sample having 1440 total minutes. Nobody has less than 1440 minutes. The suggestion in the linked post suggests dropping bls_other and bls_pcare. However, this results in almost nobody having 1440 minutes, and the average is now 850. Can I do better than 88%? Do the other 12% reflect mis-reported time? Thank you for your help. Jacob

2

Hello,

I may have figured it out. It looks like bls_comm_msg almost always is equal to the difference between the total time variable I described above at 1440. So creating total time like this:

gen tottime= bls_carehh+bls_carenhh+bls_comm+bls_educ+bls_food+bls_hhact+bls_leis+bls_other+bls_pcare+bls_purch+bls_social+bls_work-bls_comm_msg

equals 1440 for 99.8% of the sample. It seems that “household and personal messages” is being double counted under bls_comm_msg and bls_hhact_hhmgmt and thus are going in the aggregate categories bls_comm “telephone calls, mail, and email” and bls_hhact “household activities”. The 12% difference in time=1440 is completely explained by bls_comm_msg>0. The 88% of cases that match (see previous post) all have bls_comm_msg=0. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything.