Trends in African-American Time Use and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Faculty Sponsor: Karl David Boulware

Angelina Chang

Angelina Chang is a rising junior (’24) from Taoyuan, Taiwan who graduated from Taipei Zhongshan Girls’ High. She likes to read science fiction, play poker and eat good food in her free time. On campus, she’s involved with BookBuds and works as a WSWS Bystander Facilitator after performing in the fall speaking theatre. As an Economics & Mathematics double major, she has worked closely with the Gordon Career Center to secure a finance internship and hopefully work in institutional banking after Wesleyan.

Abstract: The impacts of COVID 19 have disproportionately affected people of colour, especially African Americans. My project gives a broader view on the time use of the people most disrupted during the height of the pandemic. By using 2020 microdata files from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) conducted by the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, we can have a clear view of how African Americans spent their day before and after COVID 19 disruptions happened. By combining the microdata files: ATUS Respondent, ATUS summary and ATUS-CPS and analysing through STATA we found that Work and work-related activities decreased whilst Leisure & Sports increased relative to the base case month of February before the pandemic started. Hopefully, others interested in understanding the use of African Americans’ time can use my data and findings for further research.

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