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

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/hello-what-time-use-variables-should-add-up-to-1440-minutes/2153>\
**Category:** TIME USE\
**Created:** [February 9, 2018, 5:58pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/hello-what-time-use-variables-should-add-up-to-1440-minutes/2153 "2018-02-09T17:58:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jacobbas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@jacobbas](https://forum.ipums.org/u/jacobbas)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 5:58pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/hello-what-time-use-variables-should-add-up-to-1440-minutes/2153/1 "2018-02-09T17:58:00Z")

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Hello, my question is the same as this:

> [@I would like to measure total time, which should add to 1440.](https://forum.ipums.org/t/i-would-like-to-measure-total-time-which-should-add-to-1440/1892/1):
>
> I would like to measure total time, which should add to 1440. When I try to make my total time variable by adding all the bls\_ categories together (bls\_carehh +bls\_carenhh +bls\_comm +bls\_educ +bls\_food +bls\_hhact +bls\_leis +bls\_other +bls\_pcare +bls\_purch +bls\_social +bls\_work), some of the total times add to more than 1440. Can you tell me which categories are not mutually exclusive? Thanks for your help.

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

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jacobbas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@jacobbas](https://forum.ipums.org/u/jacobbas)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 6:39pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/hello-what-time-use-variables-should-add-up-to-1440-minutes/2153/2 "2018-02-09T18:39:00Z")

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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.