Time Use and City Size

We study how time use varies with city size. Residents of big cities spend more time traveling and less time on leisure and socializing, and there is substantial heterogeneity by gender, marital status, presence of children, income, and education. These differences are driven by city size rather than sorting on observables. We find that time allocation in big cities is associated with lower well-being and that accounting for time use differences lowers the city-size wage premium by one-quarter. We also find that time use variation by city size has fallen since 2020, partly due to remote work.