Population aging, societal time, and household energy use beyond home

Abstract

This chapter investigates the effects of aging populations on social practices and resource use, emphasizing household activities that take place outside the home in post-industrial societies. Traditional economic models often discard demographic shifts caused by aging and the functional shifts between households and service sectors, leading to inadequate analyses of societal roles and energy consumption. To address this gap, we introduce a novel “user-provider” approach that integrates time allocation across various economic sectors in Spain and Japan. The chapter highlights challenges in data accuracy, particularly biases in time allocation statistics. Our approach enriches the End-use Matrix socio-metabolic accounting tool by incorporating users’ time, thereby providing a more comprehensive national biophysical budget. This shift emphasizes the value of users’ time in assessing resource use, where, with aging, the number of homemakers decreases and digitalization shifts tasks from households to the service sector. The findings illustrate how aging influences societal care demands and affects the availability of time for other activities, potentially driving an increase in mechanization in primary and secondary activities. These shifts, along with associated environmental pressures, underscore the need for refined methodologies to better understand and manage the socio-environmental implications of aging.