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Personal care
Personal care includes our basic needs (such as sleeping and eating) and is therefore a fundamental part of the day. The amount of sleep, for example, has a major impact on our quality of life (Kahneman & Krueger 2006; Ancoli-Israel et al. 2008; Dewald et al. 2010; Van Laethem et al. 2015). After a night of too little sleep a day rarely turns into a good day.
According to some, modern life has become so rushed that there is little time left for personal care. Both journalists and researchers have sounded the alarm about the amount of sleep people get today. They presume that people are suffering from a chronic lack of sleep because they are kept awake by the endless possibilities of the Internet, the blue light emitted by smartphone screens and the stress of daily life (Van Gelder 2014; Vantyghem 2017; Weeda 2017). Do we manage to get the recommended eight hours’ sleep per day?
And what has happened with other types of personal care? This card investigates how the time spent on personal care activities has changed over de last decade. In addition, we compare men and women, educational levels and age groups and look at the differences between men and women.
What kind of activities are categorised as ‘personal care’?
In 2016, Dutch people aged 12 years and older spent an average of 11 and a quarter hours on sleep and other types of personal care (this is equivalent to 79 hours per week). People spent 1 hour 35 minutes eating and drinking at home. They spent more than one hour per day on activities such as washing and dressing. However, most personal care was spent in bed: an average of 8 hours 25 minutes per day. People spent almost one hour longer in bed on Sundays than on an average weekday.
| 2006 | 2011 | 2016 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep | 58,6 | 59,4 | 59,2 |
| Eating and drinking at home | 10,8 | 10,6 | 11,1 |
| Washing and dressing | 6,2 | 6,2 | 7,1 |
Source:SCP (TBO’06); SCP/CBS (TBO’11-’16)
Little change in time spent sleeping and eating
The figures provide no support for the assumption that we spend less time on sleep and other forms of personal care today than in the past. We did not spend any more (or any less) time in bed in 2006 than we do today. And the amount of time spend eating and drinking fluctuates only marginally over this period. There are also no indications that there is less time for activities such as showering and dressing.
Eating and drinking between 1975 and 2015
Because time use data have been collected since 1975, we can examine trends before 2006. In the article ‘Fast or slow food?’, the researchers investigate how food-related time has changed between 1975 and 2005. They show that people spent 15 minutes per day less eating and drinking at home in 2005 than in 1975. Compared to 30 years earlier, people spent almost twice as much time going out for dinner and take-out (Mandemakers & Roeters 2014).
Do we manage to get 8 hours of sleep a day?
In the category ‘bed rest’, we distinguish between sleeping and lying in bed awake or ill.
Participants in the survey report that they spend an average of 8 hours 15 minutes per day sleeping and 10 minutes lying awake. While it is of course possible that people who lie awake at night have not always recorded this accurately, it seems that a majority of Dutch people meets the recommended eight hours sleep per day. To be precise, 60% of participants in the diary week exceeded the eight-hour threshold. This does not change if we look only at the population of working age. Among young people, no less than 88% reported that they sleep for 8 hours or more per day. Roughly 5% of the Dutch citizens reported that they slept less than 6.5 hours per day (or night).
Personal care by educational level
| Full population | Washing and dressing | Eating and drinking at home | Sleep |
|---|---|---|---|
| low educational level | 7,4 | 12,4 | 61,6 |
| intermediate educational level | 7,2 | 10,7 | 58,9 |
| high educational level | 6,9 | 10,7 | 57,7 |
| Population 20 through 64 years old | Washing and dressing | Eating and drinking at home | Sleep |
|---|---|---|---|
| low educational level | 7,1 | 12 | 59,6 |
| intermediate educational level | 7 | 9,6 | 58,7 |
| high educational level | 6,7 | 9,9 | 57,5 |
Source:SCP/CBS (TBO’16)
Educational differences greater than gender differences
Per week, women spend three hours more on personal care than men.
However, the differences between the educational groups appear to be slightly greater than those between men and women. People with a low educational level spend almost six hours per week more on personal care than people with a high educational level. This gap is smaller if we look only at people of working age, but is still 4.5 hours per week.
Personal care by age and family status
| Men | Washing and dressing | Eating and drinking at home | Sleep |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12-19 years old | 5,3 | 8,6 | 66,3 |
| 20-64 years old, single, no children | 6 | 8,5 | 60,1 |
| 20-64 years old, coupled, no children | 6,8 | 10,6 | 55,5 |
| 20-64 years old, coupled with children | 6 | 10 | 56,4 |
| ≥65 years old, single | 7,3 | 11,7 | 61,7 |
| ≥65 years old, coupled | 7,3 | 16 | 59,3 |
| Women | Washing and dressing | Eating and drinking at home | Sleep |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12-19 years old | 8,1 | 7,8 | 65,6 |
| 20-64 years old, single, no children | 7,5 | 8,1 | 61,1 |
| 20-64 years old, coupled, no children | 7,7 | 12,2 | 59,4 |
| 20-64 years old, coupled with children | 7,4 | 11,7 | 57,5 |
| ≥65 years old, single | 8,8 | 15,3 | 58,1 |
| ≥65 years old, coupled | 8,8 | 17,1 | 58,1 |
Source:SCP/CBS (TBO’16)
Older people spend more time on personal care, but do not sleep more
Several studies have shown that sleep patterns vary with age. Young people, for example, need more sleep, while older people experience more problems sleeping (Ancoli-Israel et al. 2008; Klerman & Dijk 2008). The position of young people stands out particularly clearly in the time use statistics. They spend much more time in bed than adults. There are few differences between older people and people of working age.
References
Ancoli-Israel, S., L. Ayalon & C. Salzman (2008). Sleep in the elderly: Normal variations and common sleep disorders. In: Harvard Review of Psychiatry.
Dewald, J.F., A.M. Meijer, F.J. Oort, G.A. Kerkhof & S.M. Bögels (2010). The influence of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness on school performance in children and adolescents: a meta- analytic review. In: Sleep Medicine Reviews, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 179-189.
Gelder, L. van (2014). ‘Blauw licht smartphone ontregelt biologische klok’. Accessed on 9 December 2017 at https://newscientist.nl/nieuws/blauw-licht-smartphone-ontregelt-biologische-klok/.
Kahneman, D. & A.B. Krueger (2006). Developments in the measurement of subjective well-being. In: Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 3-24.
Klerman, E.B. & D.J. Dijk (2008). Age-related reduction in the maximal capacity for sleep— implications for insomnia. In: Current Biology, vol. 18, no. 15, pp. 1118-1123.
Laethem, M. van, D.G.J. Beckers, M.A.J. Kompier, G. Kecklund, S.N.J. van den Bossche & S.A.E. Geurts (2015). Bidirectional relations between work-related stress, sleep quality and perseverative cognition. In: Journal of Psychosomatic Research, vol. 79, no. 5, pp. 391-398.
Mandemakers, J.J. & A. Roeters (2014). Fast or slow food? Explaining trends in food-related time in the Netherlands, 1975–2005. In: Acta Sociologica, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 121-137.
Vantyghem, P. (2017). We slapen te kort en doen daarom soms rare dingen. Consulted on 9 December 2017 at http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20171011_03125373.
Weeda, F. (2017). ‘Ik ben 16 en ik slaap niet voor 2 uur.’ In: NRC Handelsblad, 13 March.
Cite this card
Roeters, A. (2017). Personal care. In: Time use in the Netherlands: Edition 1. Retrieved [datum vandaag] from https://digital.scp.nl/timeuse1/personal-care.
Information notes
As with the other activities, we look only at the main activities. For more information, see the card Background of the Time Use Survey.
Women reach this treshold more often than men (64% versus 57%).