What do 8 billion people do on an average day?
As a global population, we have about 190 billion hours every day at our disposal. Each one of us allocates their time a little differently. But how does a person’s day unfold who lives beyond our towns, cities or countries? To find out, a research team led by Canada’s McGill University used data from 145 countries (about 87 % of the world’s population) that was gathered between 2000 and 2019. Data included the economic and social activities of people of all ages, and was collected from national statistics agencies, international organisations and previous research. The findings were published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’(opens in new window).
A day in the life of the world
“We wanted to know - what does the time allocation of humanity look like, averaged over all people and across all countries?” commented first author William Fajzel, a PhD student in Earth system science at McGill, in a news release(opens in new window). “In other words, if the world were a single average person, what would their day look like?” So, what does a normal day look like? You’d probably begin with the assumption that most hours are spent working. You couldn’t be more wrong. Findings showed that the majority spent a considerable amount of the day enjoying themselves. Overall, we spend slightly more than 9 hours doing things we enjoy, hygiene, grooming and taking care of our health. We spend an average of 9.1 hours a day sleeping or in bed. How about work, you ask? Well, that is just 2.6 hours, or about 11 % of the global human day. Remember, it’s the average of all humans. The average adult puts in over 8 hours daily if spread across a 5-day, 40 plus-hour workweek. Eating and food preparation accounts for another 2.5 hours, while education represents only 1.1 hours. Cooking or preparing food, including washing up, are just under an hour, and cleaning and maintaining living spaces makes up about 48 minutes. Praying or religious practice takes up 12 minutes.
Informed decisions about how time is used
“At present, we are struggling to come to terms with global challenges, and that calls for fresh perspectives on how the world works,” explained senior author Eric Galbraith, a professor in Earth system science at McGill. “If we are to sustainably navigate climate change and biodiversity loss, adapt to rapid technological change, and achieve global development goals it is crucial to understand the big picture of how the global human system functions, so that we can see where there is potential for change.” The authors concluded in the paper: “Time, it has been said, is the coin of life—and in a globally connected society, it is essential to have a thorough global understanding of how that coin is spent.”