Discretionary Time: A New Method of Cross-National Welfare Comparison Focusing on freedom

Cross-national comparisons of welfare regimes and their gender divisions explore issues of income and employment. Those bring liberation of a sort, but they do not exhaust people's freedom and autonomy. This Project will explore how paid and unpaid labour responsibilities interact, impinging on people's discretionary time and thus autonomy. A new measure of 'discretionary time' will be developed and its usefulness for cross-national comparisons illustrated through analysis of time use data from Australia, Finland, Canada and Sweden. Different ways of targeting social assistance to the most time-pressured groups in society will be examined for policy lessons from abroad.