Time Use of Youth during a Pandemic: Evidence from Mexico

For our analysis of the effects of the pandemic on the time use of youth, we use the micro level data from the 2018, 2019 and 2020 National Occupation and Employment Survey (ENOE) from Mexico’s National Institute of Informational Statistics and Geography (INEGI). Similar to the Current Population Survey (CPS), the ENOE is a nationally representative continuous household survey of approximately 120,000 households per quarter and is the source for official employment statistics in Mexico as well as a main source for academic studies of the labor market. Representative at the national level and at the state level as well, the ENOE collects data from the population aged 12 years and over on labor force participation, activities during the previous week, occupation, informality, unemployment as well as socio economic characteristics. Importantly for our purposes, the ENOE includes a short section on time use during the previous week in all rounds including time spent in studies, in domestic work and in other unpaid activities. The type of sampling used is a stratified probabilistic two stage cluster design. To study the effects of the pandemic we compare time use just before the pandemic started in January-March 2020 with time use at the beginning of the new school year in September 2020 (classes begin mid August). However, because there may be seasonal variation in enrollment and time dedicated to work and studies over the months of the calendar year, we also analyze changes in time use over this same time period in 2018 and 2019. This allows us to verify that the pre-post changes we observe in 2020 are likely related to the pandemic rather than reflecting seasonality. Moreover, given that the ENOE includes the municipality code, we were able to marge data coming from the 2010 Census and from the Mexican Population Council (Conapo).