How Taiwanese consumers spend their time.

One of the most revealing elements of the statistics developed by National Statistics of Taiwan is how they have translated their categorization of time use into English. The following time budget line items are all categorized together: Commuting, working, going to school, domestic activities, and interestingly, "purchasing goods."

The category heading is translated as "Duty Time."

This betrays a mindset undoubtedly evolving from the powerful influence of Confucianism on Chinese culture. A sample quote from Confucius sums it up. "When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself."

"Duty", of course, is a cliche observation of behavior in many Asian cultures. But looking at the ratios in the graph above something far more ordinary is exposed.

The black line on top plots the relationship between free time and work-which includes all of the line items mentioned above in the duty time category. (Note: the graph's time scale although shown as uniform is not uniform.)

The Market: Asia Pacific calculation of this ratio shows that as work time decreases, the percentage of free time increases. This is an expected result.

This line crests with the survey results from the 2000 Survey of Social Development. Statistics developed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that the unemployment rate in Taiwan increased to 3.0 percent in 2000 from a low of 1.4 percent in 1993. (Peak unemployment in the years from 1982 through the IMF's predictions for 2006-4.0 percent-and 2007-3.9 percent-is 5.2 percent in 2002.)

The calculation for the relationship between work and personal time, the yellow line, which includes grooming, bathing, as well as the main line item, sleep, reinforces the expected result above. The less the Taiwanese work, the more time they put into personal care. The Taiwanese sleep a little more and they take a little more time with grooming activities. This also makes sense.

In fact, the Taiwanese, on average, are champion sleepers. An analysis of the results from the 2000 survey (which differs only slightly from the 2004 survey) says, "The average sleep time is 8 hours and 42 minutes, 5 more minutes than 1994 and 58 more minutes than the Japanese."

More is revealed from the bottom (blue) line. No matter whether the Taiwanese are hard at work or looking for work, the ratio between how they use their free time and personal time is fairly constant. The blue line looks almost flat.

This is consistent with other analytical results from the 2000 survey that show the Taiwanese incline to preferring indoor activities to outdoor activities. National Statics comments, "Continual and regular exercise habit has yet to be promoted."

In regard to the frequency of exercise, the 2000 survey found that "the percentage of those who exercise regularly is inversely proportionate to age."

More ordinary results: The biggest use of free time? Overwhelmingly, it is watching television, which consumes approximately 40 percent of free time. The average Taiwanese over 15 years of age spends 2:19 daily watching television. A March 2004 study from the University of California, Berkeley, showed, by comparison, adult Americans spent an average of 2:48 watching television. An analysis termed these results "sobering."

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