More people living in rural areas spent their time in learning activities in 2024 than those in urban areas, according to a survey by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).

The MoSPI defined learning activity as time spent on formal education which involves school/university attendance, extra-curricular activities, homework among other things. It also includes travelling time-related to learning.

The second edition of the Time Use Survey (TUS), conducted between January- December of 2024, showed that females have closed the gap with men in spending time on learning activities in the last five years.

Women continued to spend 84 minutes “learning”, while the time spent by men declined to 94 minutes from 102 minutes in the last five years.

Notably, the time spent on “learning activity” declined for both the urban and rural areas in 2024 as compared to what it was in 2019.

While in urban areas people spent 87 minutes a day on learning in 2024, they spent 95 minutes in 2019. Similarly, people spent 90 minutes in rural areas in 2024, compared to 92 minutes in 2019, the report said.

The first country-wide TUS survey was conducted by MoSPI during January and December, 2019.

“India is among the few countries, including Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, USA and China that conduct the national TUS to analyse how people allocate their time to various daily activities,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The primary objective of the survey is to measure the participation of men and women in paid and unpaid activities,” it added.

For the TUS 2024, information on time use was collected for people aged 6 years and above with a reference period of 24 hours.