Nigeria Time Use Survey 2024

First round

The Nigeria Time Use Survey (NTUS) 2024 marks a significant milestone as the country's first stand-alone effort to systematically measure how individualsallocate their time across paid and unpaid work, personal care, and leisure activities.The exercise provides robust empirical evidence to inform gender-sensitive policy design,development planning, and the implementation of global and national commitments,particularly to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.4.1 on unpaid care and domestic work.

The International Classification of Time Use Statistics (ICATUS) 2016 was followed to make the time use statistics comparableand standard. The NTUS employed a three stage stratified sampling design, covering a total of 3,600 households and yielding data from 6,431 individuals aged 15 years and above. Data was collected through a faceto-face personal interview using Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) devices.

The survey revealed that 28.1% of participating households were located in rural areas, while 71.9% were in urban areas. Across the studied states, the household headship breakdown showed that 81.9% of households were headed by males while 18.1% were headed by females.Furthermore, among households headed by females, 81.0% were situated in urban areas, while 19.0% were in rural areas. Similarly,households headed by males, 69.9% live in urban areas and 30.1% live in rural areas.

On average, people aged 15 years and above spent 12.5% of their day (3 hours) on unpaid domestic and care work.Disaggregated by sex, women dedicated 21.0% of their day (5 hours) to unpaid domestic and care work, while men spent 4.1% of their day (roughly 1 hour). The gender disparity is pronounced across both urban and rural areas. Rural women spent higher proportion of time (24.1% - almost 6 hours) on unpaid domestic and care work, compared to rural men (3.7% - less than an hour). Similarly, urban women spent more time (19.8% - almost 5 hours) than urban men (4.3% - one hour). These differences highlight deeply rooted gender roles and unequal distribution of unpaid work within households, which shows that women consistently spent more time on unpaid domestic and care work than men among the studied states.

The result further reveals that, women spent 5.9% of their day compared to 1.2% by men in unpaid care services. Also, in unpaid domestic work, women spent higher time 15.1% compared to men with 2.9%. In all, women spent five times the hours that men spent on unpaid domestic and care work in the four surveyed states. This pattern was held across urban and rural locations and across wealth quintiles.

The data shows level of participation of men and women in broad activities. Men participated more in SNA productive activities (80.3%) than women with 73.7%. In contrast, women engaged more in non-SNA activities (97.1%) than men with 66.6%.The participation rate in learning was more for men with 15.2%, while women had 10.5%. The trend remains the same in both urban and rural areas. There exists a significant disparity in the time spent by men and women on SNA and non-SNA productive activities. While men spent more time than women on SNA activities, the reverse is the case for non- SNA activities. For instance, men spent372.6 minutes on SNA activities, and women spent 234 minutes on the same activity. On the other hand, men spent 79.3 minutes on non-SNA activity while women spent 314.3 minutes.In addition, women and men spent slightly different amounts of time on learning activities. Men spent 46.1 minutes, and women spent 31.5 minutes. Even thoughmen and women spent a significantproportion of their time on other nonproductive activities such as sleeping, relaxing, socializing, religious activities, etc.,time spent on them was still higher for men.

In conclusion, Time Use Survey 2024 offers a disaggregated portrait of how individuals allocate their time in the four (4) studied states, with a special focus on unpaid care and domestic work. The results emphasize the need for targeted investments in care infrastructure, gender equality reforms, and policies that recognize and redistribute unpaid work. The integration of time-use statistics into Nigeria's regular statistical reporting will enhance the country's ability to monitor progress on inclusive development and gender equality.