Social Structure and Daily Behaviours: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Time-Use Patterns in Poland and Armenia

Sociological and economic literature points to numerous differences across societies and social categories in their patterns of time allocation. For instance, studies of the labour force show that daily behaviours differ significantly between people of higher and lower occupational status (e.g. Kohn and Schooler, 1983). In the same time, behaviours of one social category, e.g. the unemployed, can be substantially different across different societies (e.g. Krueger, 2008). There are thus at least two dimensions that affect people’s daily time-use patterns: social norms and arrangements in a particular country, and individual place within the social structure. This study addresses both of them, analysing the influence of the macro-level setting (country) and basic social characteristics (gender, age, and employment status) on individual time-use patterns. This approach focuses on differences in the sequence structure and time allocation (e.g. unpaid work, socializing) analysed in a cross-sectional perspective. Since most of the existing reports on structural differences in behaviours come from developed Western countries, this study uses time-use data from the countries rarely included in comparative research carried out in the field: Poland and Armenia. Daily time-use patterns of Poles and Armenians are compared in terms of how much they differ across social categories, as well as what are other lines of such differentiation in these societies. The additional benefit of the study is that it compares daily practices in the countries of Central Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus region.