Economists coined a term for the condition of having money but not enough hours to live.
Time poverty entered academic and policy language in the 1990s as researchers attempted to measure a form of deprivation that income statistics alone could not capture.1 A person is time-poor when the hours required by paid work, unpaid domestic labor, caregiving, and commuting leave insufficient time for rest, relationships, and personal needs.
The concept challenged the assumption that economic growth automatically improves quality of life. A worker earning a high salary while working seventy hours per week, commuting two hours per day, and shouldering domestic responsibilities could be financially comfortable and time-destitute at once.
Economist Vicki Bynner and other researchers developed time-poverty measurement frameworks that attempted to set minimum thresholds for necessary time allocations, including sleep, personal care, and nonmarket obligations.2 When the sum of these necessary activities and paid work exceeded the hours in a day, a person was classified as time-poor.
Studies using these frameworks consistently found that women were disproportionately time-poor, because they bore a larger share of unpaid domestic and caregiving labor across virtually all countries studied.1
The OECD began including time-use data in its Better Life Index, recognizing that time allocated to leisure and personal care was an indicator of wellbeing alongside income, housing, and employment.3
The language of time poverty reframed overwork. Instead of describing someone as busy, ambitious, or dedicated, the concept named their condition as a deficit, a form of poverty that paralleled financial poverty in its effects on health, relationships, and autonomy.
Time theft describes employers' fear that workers are stealing the company's time. Time poverty describes the inverse condition, in which the demands of the system leave workers with too little time of their own.