With 60 participants and a dedicated workshop series, the MPC Work, Family, and Time group is the largest and most active research group at the Center, producing a steady stream of path-breaking research. Over the next five years, these scholars will contribute to our understanding of work and family by conducting research on:
- time use,
- changing workplaces and workforce composition, and
- work and family issues in historical and developing economies.
Much of this research will take advantage of newly available data now under construction at MPC: integrated time-use data spanning the period from 1960 to the present; linked CPS data for the period since 1962; full count historical census files from 1790 to 1940; and the Census Longitudinal Infrastructure Project.
MPC investigators are developing innovative methods to study the relationship between individual well-being, time use, and time spent with family members. This research draws on the deep expertise with time-use data at MPC developed over 10 of years working on the IPUMS-Time Use project. We are investigating how couples’ shared time varies across time, space, and relationship type, and how well-being is tied to different types of shared activities. Flood and Meier are leveraging the rich American Time Use data to examine parents’ well-being and how this varies by gender and employment status. Flood and Moen are analyzing how various types of engagement in later life are tied to well-being; this work is especially relevant as the healthier, more active baby boomers approach retirement age.
Over the next five years, we will explore how the aging population, new technologies, and the global economy are changing the labor market and the nature of work. MPC research will contribute to understanding the changing workplace, and especially how work intersects with family, demographic behavior, health, and well-being. This body of research will draw on our new linked longitudinal data from IPUMS-CPS to examine short-run changes in employment following family transitions over the last half century.
The rich ferment of work-family research at MPC also includes investigations of
- long-run changes in the relationship of economic opportunity to marriage and family formation,
- historical studies are examining how family conditions in early life affect later health, well-being, and economic mobility,
- work-family interactions in the Global South.
Conveners: Sarah Flood, Colleen Manchester
For more information about Work, Family, and Time events, contact floo0017@umn.edu.