Time and the melting pot

American Demographics, June, 1998 by John Robinson, Bart Landry, Ronica Rooks

African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic whites each have different ways of spending time. For example, blacks spend the most time on religious activities, whites spend the most time on housework, and Asians spend the most time on education.

America is often called a nation of immigrants and a "melting pot" where disparate cultures blend into one. This may have been true for European immigrants who arrived before World War I. But is it still true for today's immigrants, who are more likely to come from Asia and Latin America? We are now a nation of old and new immigrants who come from western and non-western cultures. Are these diverse cultures blending in, or has a multicultural mix replaced the melting pot?

One way to measure the differences between ethnic groups is by measuring the differences in their lifestyles. Hints of these differences should show up in how each group spends time. For example, time-use specialists often refer to France, Germany, and other Western European countries as "eating and sleeping cultures" because Europeans spend much more time than Americans or Asians on these two activities. Perhaps the descendants of European immigrants 80 or 100 years ago cut short their mealtimes and bedtimes to adapt to the brisker American pace.

In the same way, Asian and Latin cultures are noted for the strength of their family ties. Will Americans of Asian and Latin ancestry, then, continue their traditional cultural emphasis on family time, once they are in the land of multiple TVs and fast-food restaurants? Have African Americans continued their traditional commitment to church communities and extended family networks, even after decades of migration to urban areas?

Time-diary evidence from the Americans' Use of Time Project can shed light on some of these questions. Of course, most Americans of European ancestry have been assimilated into American culture, and few pure-bred French or German respondents show up in this cross-sectional survey. It is possible, however, to contrast the differences in time use between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans from the majority of non-Hispanic white Americans.

These survey data are not sensitive enough to capture the specific lifestyles of individual nationality groups, because the three minority groups together represent less than 30 percent of survey respondents. These three groups also fail to distinguish dozens of distinctive nationality groups: Japanese and Pakistanis are both counted as Asians, for example, and Argentineans and Puerto Ricans are lumped together as Hispanic. Finally, the survey is limited to English-speaking adults, eliminating about 1 in 12 Americans who tell the Census Bureau that they do not speak English "very well." Non-English speakers may provide America's purest examples of how different cultural traditions are expressed in time use, but they are not included here.

It is important to be conscious of the different demands that class and family make on different racial and ethnic groups. For example, a larger percentage of Asian immigrants may make their living as entrepreneurs, and this activity often requires extremely long work hours. Like turn-of-the-century European immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Hispanic newcomers are overwhelmingly in working-class jobs. And African-American families are noted for a long history of having both spouses employed, as well as for the growing number of female-headed families since the early 1970s. These differences often shape time use in ways that are not easily understood. They may force people to spend their time doing things they would not do if they had a choice.

Despite these limitations, it is useful to look at broad differences in time use for the four major ethnic classifications. The data show several important similarities that apply across all groups. But they also reveal differences that could indicate the relative importance of work, family, and personal fulfillment to each group.

Broad Ethnic Differences

Participants of all four ethnic groups in the Americans' Use of Time Survey completed the same daily time diary, showing the number of minutes they spent doing various things for one day. Between 1994 and 1996, telephone interviewers asked more than 8,000 adults across the U.S. to describe chronologically all their activities for the previous 24-hour day. These open-ended diary accounts were then converted into 96 quantitative categories of activity, which in turn were re-coded into 20 broader categories under the 5 major time headings of paid work, family care, personal care, free time, and travel. The 1994-96 results can be compared with previous editions of the survey taken in 1965, 1975, and 1985.

Paid work: the diary data show relatively small work hour differences by ethnic group. On average, the 1994-96 data show Hispanics spending the least time at work, with a weekly average of 22 hours; and Asian Americans spending slightly more, at 23.4 hours. The 23-hour work times may seem low because the samples combine full-time workers with part-time workers, homemakers, and retirees.