2023-06-23 10:40:06
The day has 24 hours for everyone. For a current world population of 8 billion people, this represents a total of approximately 190,000 million human hours. How we spend those hours determines the impact we have on our environment and how we experience life.
To find out how the inhabitants of the planet use their time, a research team in which the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) has participated has compiled and analyzed information on economic and non-economic activities in order to estimate, for the first time, how a day in the life of the world.
The way we spend time determines the impact we have on our environment and how we experience life.
“Today, we are struggling to face global challenges, and that requires new perspectives on how the world works,” he says. Eric Galbraithresearcher at ICTA-UAB and McGill University and lead author of the study published in PNAS.
“If we are to sustainably address climate change and biodiversity loss, adapt to rapid technological change, and meet global development goals, it is essential to understand the global functioning of the human system to see where there is potential for change.”
A global vision of our collective works
The researchers wanted to know what humanity’s time allocation is like, calculating the average over all people and in all countries. “In other words, if the world were one person, what would your day-to-day be like?” William Fajzela doctoral student at McGill University and co-author of the study.
To find out, they examined time-use and work data collected over the period 2000-2019 (to avoid any impact from the COVID pandemic) on more than 140 countries (representing 87% of the world’s population).
The study collects data on the use of time and work during the period 2000-2019 in more than 140 countries
The researchers categorized all the actions people perform in a day, including work and non-work activities, depending on the purpose of the activity. For this they used 24 categories that are divided into three large groups.
The first with those intended to alter the outside world (including the supply or modification of food, energy, buildings, maintenance of the environment, etc.).
The second with the categories focused on human minds or bodies (including hygiene and care of personal appearance, mood and health of oneself and others, as well as education, religion, hobbies, socializing, sports, the media, rest, etc.).
And finally, the third with the organization of activities within society (such as transport, commerce, finance, law and governance, etc.)
Focused on ourselves and others
They then manually categorized nearly 4,000 unique activities, discovering surprising things like how much time is spent on human-centered activities: something more than 9 hours.
Infographic of the daily time spent, according to the results. / UAB
Sleeping or being in bed takes another 9 hours (The overall estimate includes young people, who tend to sleep more hours). Of the remaining 6 hoursgrowing and gathering food, preparing it, moving around, and tasks related to trade, finance, sales, legislation, governance, surveillance take about an hour each.
Most of the time is spent on human-centered activities: just over 9 hours
Waste management only occupies 1 minute of the world day, in clear contrast to the 45 minutes dedicated to order and maintain our homes. All infrastructure and building construction is done in about 15 minutes.
Surprisingly, the time spent on activities such as meals, daily commutes, hygiene and personal grooming and food preparation does not change systematically based on the material wealth of a population. In contrast, the time spent growing and gathering food varies greatly depending on wealth: from more than 1 hour in low-income countries to less than 5 minutes in high-income countries.
Time dedicated to economic activities
Since the study includes both economic and non-economic activities, a portion of the total time in each of the categories described above represents people engaged in economic activities such as doctors and nurses, cooks and farm workers, etc.
The researchers estimated that the entire world economy occupies about 2.6 hours of the average human day. This economic activity is dominated by agriculture and livestock, followed by activities such as commerce, finance and law, and manufacturing.
The researchers estimated that the entire world economy takes up about 2.6 hours of the average human day.
Although the total of 2.6 hours may seem small, the working population only represents about half of the world’s population. For the working population, this equates to a 40-hour work week.
The results of the study offer a unique perspective on how economic activities fit into the broader fabric of human life on a global scale. They also suggest that there is a lot of scope to modify the distribution of time around certain activities, such as the extraction of materials, the supply of energy and the management of waste, all of which are carried out in about 7 minutes.
Reference:
Fajzel. W., Galbraith, E.D., et al. “The global human day”. PNAS2023.
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