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In just a few generations the speed of communication, travel, consumption and production has increased by an order of magnitude. Flexible labour markets are loosening the limits on how long, when and how fast people work and as nations urbanise and cities expand, travel and commuting add further temporal demands to each day. At a more intimate scale, rising labour force participation has shifted women’s time into market work without a corresponding reduction in care-giving, creating time-related social divisions that intersect with gender and life-course. The distribution of resources — from the material to the social — is one way societies shape health, and time is another resource that people need. Lack of time is the most common reason people give for not exercising or not eating healthy food, behaviours essential to halting chronic disease burdens. Building strong and supportive relationships involves time, as does earning income or visiting a doctor. Like money, time is both valuable and finite, yet few policies or interventions address time, and even fewer studies of health systematically research it.

My seminar considers why time might be another social determinant of health, presenting theory and evidence on time–health interrelationships. I will discuss the ideas, evidence and the relevance of time to health and prevention. My research considers the relative importance of time and income scarcity to healthy eating and physical activity, and how time-health relationships lock gender inequality into the labour market.

Biography

I am a Psychologist and Professor (PhD Psychology, M Clinical Psych) at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, and the Director of the Research School of Population Health, the Australian National University. I am also an ARC awarded Future Fellow investigating time as a resource for health. I lead the work and family component of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, a study of 10,000 families, and serve as a scientific consultant to local and Federal Government on health, gender equality and work and family.

My research focuses on contemporary predicaments of work and care and their health and equity consequences, viewing health as inter-linked within families. More recently I have been developing an analysis of time as a social determinant of health, seeking to understand the significance of time as a resource, like money, which structures power relations, gender and social inequality and peoples’ capacity to be healthy.

https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/strazdins-lm