Against this background, this paper aims to enhance the understanding of the linkages between individuals’ time use and socioeconomic status, proxied by asset ownership, in lower-income contexts. We do so by leveraging the unique data from a nationally-representative survey that was implemented in Cambodia in 2019/20 with the goal of conducting private interviews with the adults in each sampled household to gather self-reported information regarding their time use across paid, unpaid and leisure activities, labor market activities, and personal asset ownership, among other topics. The data allow us to address the knowledge gaps in the literature and offer new evidence on the relationships between men’s and women’s time use and their socioeconomic status.

Specifically, we provide a comparative assessment of the relationships between individual-level time use measures and a rich set of proxies for socioeconomic status, including a diverse set of physical and financial assets, across residential and non-residential land, livestock, financial accounts, and durables such as mobile phones and vehicles. The analysis is conducted separately across men and women, and both across and within households. Our regressions allow us to discern not only the association of each proxy for individual socioeconomic status with men’s and women’s time use measures at the national-level, but whether the statistical significance and extent of the association differs across specific sub-populations.

There are five headline findings that reveal a number of stark gender inequalities in time use, as well as relevant channels that appear to be affecting men’s and women’s time allocation. First, the paper demonstrates higher time spent in unpaid work (nearly three hours per day more) by women, including among those who are employed. Women, particularly those working in agriculture, also spend significantly less time in leisure activities.

Second, the specific classes of asset ownership have large and statistically significant associations with time use measures, but that the associations have a stark gender dimension. While asset owners among women tend to shift their time away from leisure towards paid work, asset owners among men shift their time away from childcare to leisure. The evidence reflects a need to look more closely at social norms and constraints across sectors that may affect how wealth is associated with choices over time use.

Third, asset ownership is documented to have a relatively greater role in explaining time use vis-à-vis competing individual attributes that are candidate proxies for socioeconomic status, such as men’s and women’s share of household earnings, which on its own has been highlighted as an important determinant of intrahousehold time allocation (Sevilla-Sanz et al., 2010; Bittman, 2003). Understanding nuances of asset ownership is also important. Exclusive as opposed to joint ownership of assets such as mobile phones and land, for example, has a stronger effect on time use, and particularly among women.

Fourth, the analysis shows that understanding the links between time use and socioeconomic status, proxied by asset ownership, requires disaggregated perspectives - not only by ownership of different assets classes but also across different sub-populations. We find that ownership of specific (but not all) assets is associated with less unpaid work for women engaged in off-farm employment, and among those who own financial accounts, mobile phones, and motorized vehicles; mobile phones and vehicles are positively associated with time allocation to paid activities. Underscoring the importance of looking at different types of assets within a particular class, we also demonstrate opposing effects of residential versus nonresidential property ownership on time allocation for this group. Residential land ownership, for example, is positively associated with paid activity, but non-residential land ownership is negatively associated with paid work and positively associated with leisure. Among individuals focused in agriculture, on the other hand, and particularly among women, the association between ownership of assets, including land, and time allocation is substantially weaker. Relatedly, in comparison to land ownership, having specific rights 4