The enjoyment of activities: Do couples affect each others' well-being? Measuring well-being: The enjoyment of activities within couples

In this paper I investigate the use of a measure of well-being derived from time-use data on the enjoyment of activities, and explore the association between the well-being of partners. The measure of well-being used is directly derived from the subjective assessment of the enjoyment of activities as recorded in time-use diaries. It is shown that this measure yeilds plausible results which share many of the characteristics of other measures of well-being. In addition, since the diaries used in the analysis were collected from couples it has also been possible to investigate the association between the well-being of partners. It is shown that in multivariate analyses including both time-use and socio-demographic variables the effect of a partner's well-being has by far the most significant impact on individual well-being. It is argued that this combination of information offers a useful means of analysing the relationship between time-use, well-being and the couple relationship. In this sense the analysis cross-cuts some of the conventional disciplinary boundaries which have served to separate the study of emotional relationships and psychological states from that of the daily activities of households.