2014 – 2018 | FWO
About the project
Time is essentially a democratic good. Everyone can spend 24 hours a day, no more and no less. However, the way we spend our time can greatly affect our health outcomes. These behavioral patterns can be seen as healthy or unhealthy lifestyles. In this research project, we will explore the influences lifestyles can have on health, more specifically focusing on time spent on physical or non-physical activities, eating patterns, sleeping patterns and the time- allocation of work-related activities. These healthy or unhealthy lifestyles will be put into a sociological framework of inequalities. In others words, this research will try to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy lifestyles, and analyze which categories of people live healthy or unhealthy lifestyles. This research is closely related to the question whether unhealthy lifestyles should be seen as an individual responsibility, or as collective patterns. If (un)healthy lifestyles can be distinguished as collective patterns, this implies that unhealthy lifestyles are related with structures of social inequality. Time-use data collected between January 2013 and December 2013 will be used to investigate these relationships. Multiple health outcomes, more specifically subjective general health, mental health, and BMI, will be used in the analyses.
