Time as a Factor of Production: Revisiting Growth Theory through Evidence from Uttar Pradesh (India)

Conventional growth frameworks treat time as implicit within labour, assuming that labour supply and human capital can be mobilised once population, education, and capital expand. This paper revisits that assumption by examining whether time allocation functions as a binding conditioning input to production. Using unit-level data from the Time Use Survey (TUS) 2024 for Uttar Pradesh (50,532 individuals across 11,186 households), linked with district-level Gross District Domestic Product (GDDP) and NFHS-5 indicators, the study analyses how time use shapes effective labour availability and productivity. The evidence reveals a pronounced gendered asymmetry in time allocation. Men average roughly three hours of paid work per day alongside substantial discretionary time, while women devote nearly five hours daily to unpaid domestic and care work, with an unpaid-to-paid work ratio exceeding 8:1. Educational attainment does not reallocate women’s time toward market work, indicating near-zero elasticity of female paid work with respect to education. At the district level, aggregate economic output (GDDP) shows no systematic association with reductions in unpaid care time, whereas basic infrastructure, particularly sanitation and electricity, is modestly associated with lower unpaid work burdens. These findings indicate that apparent labour surplus in Uttar Pradesh coexists with effective time scarcity, and that the productive impact of labour, education, and capital is mediated by time allocation. The paper argues that growth models overstate factor availability when time is treated as a residual, and demonstrates empirically how time conditions the translation of conventional inputs into economic output.