José Ignacio Giménez-Nadal

Social connection is a key determinant of emotional well-being, yet the role of solitude in shaping both momentary affect and well-being remains understudied. This paper investigates how being alone while engaging in daily activities relates to subjective well-being, using rich time use diary data from the UK covering four distinct periods: pre-pandemic (2015–2016), the Covid-19 lockdowns (2020–2021), the relaxation phase (2021), and the post-pandemic period (2023). We find that being alone is negatively associated with momentary enjoyment, particularly in the post-pandemic period, but not during lockdowns or the initial relaxation phase, suggesting that the emotional cost of solitude depends on its perceived voluntariness and social norms. The enjoyment penalty is strongest for leisure and unpaid work episodes, and most pronounced among remote workers. Our results contribute to the literature on experienced utility, labor supply, worker time allocation, and remote work, highlighting the need to account for the emotional toll of isolation in welfare analysis and policy design.

We estimate the effect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) on household time devoted to financial management activities. The TCJA nearly doubled the standard deduction, inducing a large share of itemizing middle-income households to switch to the simpler standard deduction and thereby reducing their annual documentation burden. Using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for 2013–2023 and a difference-in-differences design comparing households with incomes of $50,000–$100,000 against lower-income households below $35,000, we find no statistically significant average treatment effect on financial management time (estimates of -0.95 to +0.53 minutes per day across the primary specifications, p > 0.06 throughout). Pre-reform event-study coefficients are jointly insignificant (F(4,50)=1.26, p=0.30), validating the parallel-trends assumption. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that college-educated treated households experienced a significant reduction (-1.35 min/day, p=0.04), that men drove most of the negative trend (triple interaction p=0.08), and that high-SALT-state households show a marginally significant response. Using the ATUS Well-Being Module, we further document a post-reform decline in the subjective happiness associated with financial management activities (-0.47 points, p=0.03), consistent with a compositional shift toward more complex and burdensome tasks. Our findings suggest that aggregate time-cost savings from tax simplification are modest and concentrated among the most financially sophisticated households.

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the organization of work time using 24-hour diary data from the American Time Use Survey. We document large increases in the incidence of work from home (WFH) following the COVID-19 outbreak, with prior selectivity into WFH disappearing. Both men and women working remotely tended to work less and experience more interruptions compared to in-office employees before the pandemic. Interestingly, the prevalence of remote work in various occupations seemed to reduce work interruptions and decrease the likelihood of non-standard work hours among men before the pandemic, pointing to its productivity-enhancing potential. However, remote workers in those environments continued to experience work interruptions and be more prone to labour during non-standard work schedules compared to their in-office counterparts. Nevertheless, the role of remote work in these occupations largely disappeared during the pandemic as remote work became a more standard arrangement.

Climate change and global warming are severe threats that currently affect the daily lives of the world population. One of the human behaviors that can be most affected by weather conditions is that of personal travel, including commuting, an activity that millions of workers worldwide engage in daily. Within this framework, we analyze the relationships between weather conditions and daily commuting in the US. To that end, we use twenty nationally representative American Time Use Surveys, combined with daily weather data at the county level, spanning the period from 2003 to 2023. The analysis reveals significant relationships between daily weather conditions and commuting mode choices. Specifically, rainy days, high temperatures, and elevated snowfall are positively associated with an increased probability of using cars as the primary commuting mode. In contrast, these weather conditions exhibit a negative relationship with alternative modes of transport, such as public transit or walking. Further findings suggest that these estimates are predominantly driven by days characterized by extremely high temperatures, heavy precipitation, and light snowfall. Finally, our results suggest adaptation to higher temperatures in warmer regions. These results are important for the design of policies aimed at mitigating the mobility consequences of climate change.