高齢期における生活時間の複雑性とその規定因

Abstract

This research examines patterns in older Japanese daily behaviors in later life. Previous studies on time use in later life focused on quantitative aspects of time use, such as an average of each activity, and ignored the holistic and sequential aspects of daily time use patterns. I used anonymized individual data from the Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities (STULA) in 2006. I employ sequence analysis to quantify the dissimilarity between categorical time series. As a result, four patterns of young older men, six patterns of old older men, five patterns of young older women, and six patterns of old older women are extracted. Men’s time allocation is structured by work, and women’s time use pattern is structured by work and leisure. To compare the complexity of time use, I use the complexity index to combine the number of transitions in the sequence with longitudinal entropy. I will give a comprehensive discussion on time use in later life of a cross-sectional diversity between men and women, a cross-sectional diversity within men and women, and the importance of work and leisure. Older women’s complexity index is higher than older men’s index. Time use in later life has gender differences continuously.