time spent in homework

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Students spend three times longer on homework than average, survey reveals

Sonya Kulkarni and Pallavi Gorantla | Jan 9, 2022

Graphic by Sonya Kulkarni

The National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association have suggested that a healthy number of hours that students should be spending can be determined by the “10-minute rule.” This means that each grade level should have a maximum homework time incrementing by 10 minutes depending on their grade level (for instance, ninth-graders would have 90 minutes of homework, 10th-graders should have 100 minutes, and so on).

As ‘finals week’ rapidly approaches, students not only devote effort to attaining their desired exam scores but make a last attempt to keep or change the grade they have for semester one by making up homework assignments.

High schoolers reported doing an average of 2.7 hours of homework per weeknight, according to a study by the Washington Post from 2018 to 2020 of over 50,000 individuals. A survey of approximately 200 Bellaire High School students revealed that some students spend over three times this number.

The demographics of this survey included 34 freshmen, 43 sophomores, 54 juniors and 54 seniors on average.

When asked how many hours students spent on homework in a day on average, answers ranged from zero to more than nine with an average of about four hours. In contrast, polled students said that about one hour of homework would constitute a healthy number of hours.

Junior Claire Zhang said she feels academically pressured in her AP schedule, but not necessarily by the classes.

“The class environment in AP classes can feel pressuring because everyone is always working hard and it makes it difficult to keep up sometimes.” Zhang said.

A total of 93 students reported that the minimum grade they would be satisfied with receiving in a class would be an A. This was followed by 81 students, who responded that a B would be the minimum acceptable grade. 19 students responded with a C and four responded with a D.

“I am happy with the classes I take, but sometimes it can be very stressful to try to keep up,” freshman Allyson Nguyen said. “I feel academically pressured to keep an A in my classes.”

Up to 152 students said that grades are extremely important to them, while 32 said they generally are more apathetic about their academic performance.

Last year, nine valedictorians graduated from Bellaire. They each achieved a grade point average of 5.0. HISD has never seen this amount of valedictorians in one school, and as of now there are 14 valedictorians.

“I feel that it does degrade the title of valedictorian because as long as a student knows how to plan their schedule accordingly and make good grades in the classes, then anyone can be valedictorian,” Zhang said.

Bellaire offers classes like physical education and health in the summer. These summer classes allow students to skip the 4.0 class and not put it on their transcript. Some electives also have a 5.0 grade point average like debate.

Close to 200 students were polled about Bellaire having multiple valedictorians. They primarily answered that they were in favor of Bellaire having multiple valedictorians, which has recently attracted significant acclaim .

Senior Katherine Chen is one of the 14 valedictorians graduating this year and said that she views the class of 2022 as having an extraordinary amount of extremely hardworking individuals.

“I think it was expected since freshman year since most of us knew about the others and were just focused on doing our personal best,” Chen said.

Chen said that each valedictorian achieved the honor on their own and deserves it.

“I’m honestly very happy for the other valedictorians and happy that Bellaire is such a good school,” Chen said. “I don’t feel any less special with 13 other valedictorians.”

Nguyen said that having multiple valedictorians shows just how competitive the school is.

“It’s impressive, yet scary to think about competing against my classmates,” Nguyen said.

Offering 30 AP classes and boasting a significant number of merit-based scholars Bellaire can be considered a competitive school.

“I feel academically challenged but not pressured,” Chen said. “Every class I take helps push me beyond my comfort zone but is not too much to handle.”

Students have the opportunity to have off-periods if they’ve met all their credits and are able to maintain a high level of academic performance. But for freshmen like Nguyen, off periods are considered a privilege. Nguyen said she usually has an hour to five hours worth of work everyday.

“Depending on the day, there can be a lot of work, especially with extra curriculars,” Nguyen said. “Although, I am a freshman, so I feel like it’s not as bad in comparison to higher grades.”

According to the survey of Bellaire students, when asked to evaluate their agreement with the statement “students who get better grades tend to be smarter overall than students who get worse grades,” responders largely disagreed.

Zhang said that for students on the cusp of applying to college, it can sometimes be hard to ignore the mental pressure to attain good grades.

“As a junior, it’s really easy to get extremely anxious about your GPA,” Zhang said. “It’s also a very common but toxic practice to determine your self-worth through your grades but I think that we just need to remember that our mental health should also come first. Sometimes, it’s just not the right day for everyone and one test doesn’t determine our smartness.”

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Anonymous • Nov 21, 2023 at 10:32 am

It’s not really helping me understand how much.

josh • May 9, 2023 at 9:58 am

Kassie • May 6, 2022 at 12:29 pm

Im using this for an English report. This is great because on of my sources needed to be from another student. Homework drives me insane. Im glad this is very updated too!!

Kaylee Swaim • Jan 25, 2023 at 9:21 pm

I am also using this for an English report. I have to do an argumentative essay about banning homework in schools and this helps sooo much!

Izzy McAvaney • Mar 15, 2023 at 6:43 pm

I am ALSO using this for an English report on cutting down school days, homework drives me insane!!

E. Elliott • Apr 25, 2022 at 6:42 pm

I’m from Louisiana and am actually using this for an English Essay thanks for the information it was very informative.

Nabila Wilson • Jan 10, 2022 at 6:56 pm

Interesting with the polls! I didn’t realize about 14 valedictorians, that’s crazy.

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What’s the Right Amount of Homework?

Decades of research show that homework has some benefits, especially for students in middle and high school—but there are risks to assigning too much.

Many teachers and parents believe that homework helps students build study skills and review concepts learned in class. Others see homework as disruptive and unnecessary, leading to burnout and turning kids off to school. Decades of research show that the issue is more nuanced and complex than most people think: Homework is beneficial, but only to a degree. Students in high school gain the most, while younger kids benefit much less.

The National PTA and the National Education Association support the “ 10-minute homework guideline ”—a nightly 10 minutes of homework per grade level. But many teachers and parents are quick to point out that what matters is the quality of the homework assigned and how well it meets students’ needs, not the amount of time spent on it.

The guideline doesn’t account for students who may need to spend more—or less—time on assignments. In class, teachers can make adjustments to support struggling students, but at home, an assignment that takes one student 30 minutes to complete may take another twice as much time—often for reasons beyond their control. And homework can widen the achievement gap, putting students from low-income households and students with learning disabilities at a disadvantage.

However, the 10-minute guideline is useful in setting a limit: When kids spend too much time on homework, there are real consequences to consider.

Small Benefits for Elementary Students

As young children begin school, the focus should be on cultivating a love of learning, and assigning too much homework can undermine that goal. And young students often don’t have the study skills to benefit fully from homework, so it may be a poor use of time (Cooper, 1989 ; Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). A more effective activity may be nightly reading, especially if parents are involved. The benefits of reading are clear: If students aren’t proficient readers by the end of third grade, they’re less likely to succeed academically and graduate from high school (Fiester, 2013 ).

For second-grade teacher Jacqueline Fiorentino, the minor benefits of homework did not outweigh the potential drawback of turning young children against school at an early age, so she experimented with dropping mandatory homework. “Something surprising happened: They started doing more work at home,” Fiorentino writes . “This inspiring group of 8-year-olds used their newfound free time to explore subjects and topics of interest to them.” She encouraged her students to read at home and offered optional homework to extend classroom lessons and help them review material.

Moderate Benefits for Middle School Students

As students mature and develop the study skills necessary to delve deeply into a topic—and to retain what they learn—they also benefit more from homework. Nightly assignments can help prepare them for scholarly work, and research shows that homework can have moderate benefits for middle school students (Cooper et al., 2006 ). Recent research also shows that online math homework, which can be designed to adapt to students’ levels of understanding, can significantly boost test scores (Roschelle et al., 2016 ).

There are risks to assigning too much, however: A 2015 study found that when middle school students were assigned more than 90 to 100 minutes of daily homework, their math and science test scores began to decline (Fernández-Alonso, Suárez-Álvarez, & Muñiz, 2015 ). Crossing that upper limit can drain student motivation and focus. The researchers recommend that “homework should present a certain level of challenge or difficulty, without being so challenging that it discourages effort.” Teachers should avoid low-effort, repetitive assignments, and assign homework “with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-directed learning.”

In other words, it’s the quality of homework that matters, not the quantity. Brian Sztabnik, a veteran middle and high school English teacher, suggests that teachers take a step back and ask themselves these five questions :

• How long will it take to complete?
• Have all learners been considered?
• Will an assignment encourage future success?
• Will an assignment place material in a context the classroom cannot?
• Does an assignment offer support when a teacher is not there?

More Benefits for High School Students, but Risks as Well

By the time they reach high school, students should be well on their way to becoming independent learners, so homework does provide a boost to learning at this age, as long as it isn’t overwhelming (Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). When students spend too much time on homework—more than two hours each night—it takes up valuable time to rest and spend time with family and friends. A 2013 study found that high school students can experience serious mental and physical health problems, from higher stress levels to sleep deprivation, when assigned too much homework (Galloway, Conner, & Pope, 2013 ).

Homework in high school should always relate to the lesson and be doable without any assistance, and feedback should be clear and explicit.

Teachers should also keep in mind that not all students have equal opportunities to finish their homework at home, so incomplete homework may not be a true reflection of their learning—it may be more a result of issues they face outside of school. They may be hindered by issues such as lack of a quiet space at home, resources such as a computer or broadband connectivity, or parental support (OECD, 2014 ). In such cases, giving low homework scores may be unfair.

Since the quantities of time discussed here are totals, teachers in middle and high school should be aware of how much homework other teachers are assigning. It may seem reasonable to assign 30 minutes of daily homework, but across six subjects, that’s three hours—far above a reasonable amount even for a high school senior. Psychologist Maurice Elias sees this as a common mistake: Individual teachers create homework policies that in aggregate can overwhelm students. He suggests that teachers work together to develop a school-wide homework policy and make it a key topic of back-to-school night and the first parent-teacher conferences of the school year.

Parents Play a Key Role

Homework can be a powerful tool to help parents become more involved in their child’s learning (Walker et al., 2004 ). It can provide insights into a child’s strengths and interests, and can also encourage conversations about a child’s life at school. If a parent has positive attitudes toward homework, their children are more likely to share those same values, promoting academic success.

But it’s also possible for parents to be overbearing, putting too much emphasis on test scores or grades, which can be disruptive for children (Madjar, Shklar, & Moshe, 2015 ). Parents should avoid being overly intrusive or controlling—students report feeling less motivated to learn when they don’t have enough space and autonomy to do their homework (Orkin, May, & Wolf, 2017 ; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008 ; Silinskas & Kikas, 2017 ). So while homework can encourage parents to be more involved with their kids, it’s important to not make it a source of conflict.

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More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests.

A Stanford education researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.   "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .   The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students' views on homework.   Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.   Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.   "The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being," Pope wrote.   Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.   Their study found that too much homework is associated with:   • Greater stress : 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.   • Reductions in health : In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.   • Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits : Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills," according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.   A balancing act   The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.   Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as "pointless" or "mindless" in order to keep their grades up.   "This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success , a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..   Pope said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.   "Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development," wrote Pope.   High-performing paradox   In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. "Young people are spending more time alone," they wrote, "which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities."   Student perspectives   The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining" – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.   The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer at the Stanford News Service .

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11 Surprising Homework Statistics, Facts & Data

The age-old question of whether homework is good or bad for students is unanswerable because there are so many “ it depends ” factors.

For example, it depends on the age of the child, the type of homework being assigned, and even the child’s needs.

There are also many conflicting reports on whether homework is good or bad. This is a topic that largely relies on data interpretation for the researcher to come to their conclusions.

To cut through some of the fog, below I’ve outlined some great homework statistics that can help us understand the effects of homework on children.

Homework Statistics List

1. 45% of parents think homework is too easy for their children.

A study by the Center for American Progress found that parents are almost twice as likely to believe their children’s homework is too easy than to disagree with that statement.

Here are the figures for math homework:

• 46% of parents think their child’s math homework is too easy.
• 25% of parents think their child’s math homework is not too easy.
• 29% of parents offered no opinion.

Here are the figures for language arts homework:

• 44% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is too easy.
• 28% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is not too easy.
• 28% of parents offered no opinion.

These findings are based on online surveys of 372 parents of school-aged children conducted in 2018.

2. 93% of Fourth Grade Children Worldwide are Assigned Homework

The prestigious worldwide math assessment Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) took a survey of worldwide homework trends in 2007. Their study concluded that 93% of fourth-grade children are regularly assigned homework, while just 7% never or rarely have homework assigned.

3. 17% of Teens Regularly Miss Homework due to Lack of High-Speed Internet Access

A 2018 Pew Research poll of 743 US teens found that 17%, or almost 2 in every 5 students, regularly struggled to complete homework because they didn’t have reliable access to the internet.

This figure rose to 25% of Black American teens and 24% of teens whose families have an income of less than $30,000 per year.

4. Parents Spend 6.7 Hours Per Week on their Children’s Homework

A 2018 study of 27,500 parents around the world found that the average amount of time parents spend on homework with their child is 6.7 hours per week. Furthermore, 25% of parents spend more than 7 hours per week on their child’s homework.

American parents spend slightly below average at 6.2 hours per week, while Indian parents spend 12 hours per week and Japanese parents spend 2.6 hours per week.

5. Students in High-Performing High Schools Spend on Average 3.1 Hours per night Doing Homework

A study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) conducted a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California. 

Across these high-performing schools, students self-reported that they did 3.1 hours per night of homework.

Graduates from those schools also ended up going on to college 93% of the time.

6. One to Two Hours is the Optimal Duration for Homework

A 2012 peer-reviewed study in the High School Journal found that students who conducted between one and two hours achieved higher results in tests than any other group.

However, the authors were quick to highlight that this “t is an oversimplification of a much more complex problem.” I’m inclined to agree. The greater variable is likely the quality of the homework than time spent on it.

Nevertheless, one result was unequivocal: that some homework is better than none at all : “students who complete any amount of homework earn higher test scores than their peers who do not complete homework.”

7. 74% of Teens cite Homework as a Source of Stress

A study by the Better Sleep Council found that homework is a source of stress for 74% of students. Only school grades, at 75%, rated higher in the study.

That figure rises for girls, with 80% of girls citing homework as a source of stress.

Similarly, the study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) found that 56% of students cite homework as a “primary stressor” in their lives.

8. US Teens Spend more than 15 Hours per Week on Homework

The same study by the Better Sleep Council also found that US teens spend over 2 hours per school night on homework, and overall this added up to over 15 hours per week.

Surprisingly, 4% of US teens say they do more than 6 hours of homework per night. That’s almost as much homework as there are hours in the school day.

The only activity that teens self-reported as doing more than homework was engaging in electronics, which included using phones, playing video games, and watching TV.

9. The 10-Minute Rule

The National Education Association (USA) endorses the concept of doing 10 minutes of homework per night per grade.

For example, if you are in 3rd grade, you should do 30 minutes of homework per night. If you are in 4th grade, you should do 40 minutes of homework per night.

However, this ‘rule’ appears not to be based in sound research. Nevertheless, it is true that homework benefits (no matter the quality of the homework) will likely wane after 2 hours (120 minutes) per night, which would be the NEA guidelines’ peak in grade 12.

10. 21.9% of Parents are Too Busy for their Children’s Homework

An online poll of nearly 300 parents found that 21.9% are too busy to review their children’s homework. On top of this, 31.6% of parents do not look at their children’s homework because their children do not want their help. For these parents, their children’s unwillingness to accept their support is a key source of frustration.

11. 46.5% of Parents find Homework too Hard

The same online poll of parents of children from grades 1 to 12 also found that many parents struggle to help their children with homework because parents find it confusing themselves. Unfortunately, the study did not ask the age of the students so more data is required here to get a full picture of the issue.

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Interpreting the Data

Unfortunately, homework is one of those topics that can be interpreted by different people pursuing differing agendas. All studies of homework have a wide range of variables, such as:

• What age were the children in the study?
• What was the homework they were assigned?
• What tools were available to them?
• What were the cultural attitudes to homework and how did they impact the study?
• Is the study replicable?

The more questions we ask about the data, the more we realize that it’s hard to come to firm conclusions about the pros and cons of homework .

Furthermore, questions about the opportunity cost of homework remain. Even if homework is good for children’s test scores, is it worthwhile if the children consequently do less exercise or experience more stress?

Thus, this ends up becoming a largely qualitative exercise. If parents and teachers zoom in on an individual child’s needs, they’ll be able to more effectively understand how much homework a child needs as well as the type of homework they should be assigned.

Related: Funny Homework Excuses

The debate over whether homework should be banned will not be resolved with these homework statistics. But, these facts and figures can help you to pursue a position in a school debate on the topic – and with that, I hope your debate goes well and you develop some great debating skills!

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is Educational Psychology?
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is IQ? (Intelligence Quotient)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
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What's the best state for you », students spend more time on homework but teachers say it's worth it.

Time spent on homework has increased in recent years, but educators say that's because the assignments have also changed.

Students Spending More Time on Homework

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High school students get assigned up to 17.5 hours of homework per week, according to a survey of 1,000 teachers.

Although students nowadays are spending significantly more time on homework assignments – sometimes up to 17.5 hours each week – the type and quality of the assignments have changed to better capture critical thinking skills and higher levels of learning, according to a recent survey of teachers conducted by the University of Phoenix College of Education. 

The survey of 1,000 K-12 teachers found, among other things, that high school teachers on average assign about 3.5 hours of homework each week. For high school students who typically have five classes with different teachers, that could mean as much as 17.5 hours each week. By comparison, the survey found middle school teachers assign about 3.2 hours of homework each week and kindergarten through fifth grade teachers assign about 2.9 hours each week. 

[ READ : Standardized Testing Debate Should Focus on Local School Districts, Report Says ]

By comparison, a 2011 study from the National Center for Education Statistics found high school students reported spending an average of 6.8 hours of homework per week, while a 1994 report from the National Center for Education Statistics – reviewing trends in data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress – found 39 percent of 17-year-olds said they did at least one hour of homework each day.

"What has changed is not necessarily the magic number of how many hours they’re doing per night, but it’s the quality of the homework," says Ashley Norris, assistant dean of the university's college of education. Part of that shift in recent years, she says, may come from more schools implementing the Common Core State Standards, which are intended to put more of an emphasis on critical thinking and problem-solving skills. 

"You see a change from teachers … giving, really, busy work … to where they’re actually creating long-term projects that students have to manage outside of the classroom, or reading, where they read and come back into the classroom and share their findings," Norris says. "It's not just about rote memorization, because we know that doesn't stick."

For younger students, having more meaningful homework assignments can help build time-management skills, as well as enhance parent-child interaction, Norris says. But the bigger connection for high school students, she says, is doing assignments outside of the classroom that get them interested in a career path.

[ MORE : How Virtual Games Can Help Struggling Students Learn ]

Moving forward, as more schools dive into more time-consuming – but Norris says more meaningful – assignments, there may be a greater shift in the number of schools utilizing the "flipped classroom" method, in which students watch a lesson or lecture at home online, and bring their questions to the classroom to work with their peers while the teacher is present to help facilitate any problems that arise. 

"This is already happening in the classrooms. And I think that idea, this whole idea where homework is this applied learning that goes outside the boundaries of a classroom – what can we use that actual class time for?" Norris says "To come back and collaborate on learning, learn from each other, maybe critique our own [work] and share those experiences."

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How Much Homework Do American Kids Do?

Various factors, from the race of the student to the number of years a teacher has been in the classroom, affect a child's homework load.

In his Atlantic essay , Karl Taro Greenfeld laments his 13-year-old daughter's heavy homework load. As an eighth grader at a New York middle school, Greenfeld’s daughter averaged about three hours of homework per night and adopted mantras like “memorization, not rationalization” to help her get it all done. Tales of the homework-burdened American student have become common, but are these stories the exception or the rule?

A 2007 Metlife study found that 45 percent of students in grades three to 12 spend more than an hour a night doing homework, including the six percent of students who report spending more than three hours a night on their homework. In the 2002-2003 school year, a study out of the University of Michigan found that American students ages six through 17 spent three hours and 38 minutes per week doing homework.

A range of factors plays into how much homework each individual student gets:

Older students do more homework than their younger counterparts.

This one is fairly obvious: The National Education Association recommends that homework time increase by ten minutes per year in school. (e.g., A third grader would have 30 minutes of homework, while a seventh grader would have 70 minutes).

Studies have found that schools tend to roughly follow these guidelines: The University of Michigan found that students ages six to eight spend 29 minutes doing homework per night while 15- to 17-year-old students spend 50 minutes doing homework. The Metlife study also found that 50 percent of students in grades seven to 12 spent more than an hour a night on homework, while 37 percent of students in grades three to six spent an hour or more on their homework per night. The National Center for Educational Statistics found that high school students who do homework outside of school average 6.8 hours of homework per week.

Race plays a role in how much homework students do.

Asian students spend 3.5 more hours on average doing homework per week than their white peers. However, only 59 percent of Asian students’ parents check that homework is done, while 75.6 percent of Hispanic students’ parents and 83.1 percent of black students’ parents check.

Teachers with less experience assign more homework.

The Metlife study found that 14 percent of teachers with zero to five years of teaching experience assigned more than an hour of homework per night, while only six percent of teachers with 21 or more years of teaching experience assigned over an hour of homework.

Math classes have homework the most frequently.

The Metlife study found that 70 percent of students in grades three to 12 had at least one homework assignment in math. Sixty-two percent had at least one homework assignment in a language arts class (English, reading, spelling, or creative writing courses) and 42 percent had at least one in a science class.

Regardless of how much homework kids are actually doing every night, most parents and teachers are happy with the way things are: 60 percent of parents think that their children have the “right amount of homework,” and 73 percent of teachers think their school assigns the right amount of homework.

Students, however, are not necessarily on board: 38 percent of students in grades seven through 12 and 28 percent of students in grades three through six report being “very often/often” stressed out by their homework.

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By submitting my email address. i certify that i am 13 years of age or older, agree to recieve marketing email messages from the princeton review, and agree to terms of use., homework wars: high school workloads, student stress, and how parents can help.

Studies of typical homework loads vary : In one, a Stanford researcher found that more than two hours of homework a night may be counterproductive. The research , conducted among students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities, found that too much homework resulted in stress, physical health problems and a general lack of balance.

Additionally, the  2014 Brown Center Report on American Education , found that with the exception of nine-year-olds, the amount of homework schools assign has remained relatively unchanged since 1984, meaning even those in charge of the curricula don't see a need for adding more to that workload.

But student experiences don’t always match these results. On our own Student Life in America survey, over 50% of students reported feeling stressed, 25% reported that homework was their biggest source of stress, and on average teens are spending one-third of their study time feeling stressed, anxious, or stuck.

The disparity can be explained in one of the conclusions regarding the Brown Report:

Of the three age groups, 17-year-olds have the most bifurcated distribution of the homework burden. They have the largest percentage of kids with no homework (especially when the homework shirkers are added in) and the largest percentage with more than two hours.

So what does that mean for parents who still endure the homework wars at home?

Read More: Teaching Your Kids How To Deal with School Stress

It means that sometimes kids who are on a rigorous college-prep track, probably are receiving more homework, but the statistics are melding it with the kids who are receiving no homework. And on our survey, 64% of students reported that their parents couldn’t help them with their work. This is where the real homework wars lie—not just the amount, but the ability to successfully complete assignments and feel success.

Parents want to figure out how to help their children manage their homework stress and learn the material.

Our Top 4 Tips for Ending Homework Wars

1. have a routine..

Every parenting advice article you will ever read emphasizes the importance of a routine. There’s a reason for that: it works. A routine helps put order into an often disorderly world. It removes the thinking and arguing and “when should I start?” because that decision has already been made. While routines must be flexible to accommodate soccer practice on Tuesday and volunteer work on Thursday, knowing in general when and where you, or your child, will do homework literally removes half the battle.

2. Have a battle plan.

Overwhelmed students look at a mountain of homework and think “insurmountable.” But parents can look at it with an outsider’s perspective and help them plan. Put in an extra hour Monday when you don’t have soccer. Prepare for the AP Chem test on Friday a little at a time each evening so Thursday doesn’t loom as a scary study night (consistency and repetition will also help lock the information in your brain). Start reading the book for your English report so that it’s underway. Go ahead and write a few sentences, so you don’t have a blank page staring at you. Knowing what the week will look like helps you keep calm and carry on.

3. Don’t be afraid to call in reserves.

You can’t outsource the “battle” but you can outsource the help ! We find that kids just do better having someone other than their parents help them —and sometimes even parents with the best of intentions aren’t equipped to wrestle with complicated physics problem. At The Princeton Review, we specialize in making homework time less stressful. Our tutors are available 24/7 to work one-to-one in an online classroom with a chat feature, interactive whiteboard, and the file sharing tool, where students can share their most challenging assignments.

4. Celebrate victories—and know when to surrender.

Students and parents can review completed assignments together at the end of the night -- acknowledging even small wins helps build a sense of accomplishment. If you’ve been through a particularly tough battle, you’ll also want to reach reach a cease-fire before hitting your bunk. A war ends when one person disengages. At some point, after parents have provided a listening ear, planning, and support, they have to let natural consequences take their course. And taking a step back--and removing any pressure a parent may be inadvertently creating--can be just what’s needed.

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Time Spent on Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-analysis Study Related to Results of TIMSS

[el tiempo dedicado a la tarea y al rendimiento académico: un estudio metaanalítico relacionado con los resultados de timss], gulnar ozyildirim akdeniz university, konyaalti, antalya, turkey, https://doi.org/10.5093/psed2021a30.

Received 31 August 2020, Accepted 24 May 2021

Homework is a common instructional technique that requires extra time, energy, and effort apart from school time. Is homework worth these investments? The study aimed to investigate whether the amount of time spent on homework had any effect on academic achievement and to determine moderators in the relationship between these two terms by using TIMSS data through the meta-analysis method. In this meta-analysis study, data obtained from 488 independent findings from 74 countries in the seven surveys of TIMSS and a sample of 429,970 students was included. The coefficient of standardized means, based on the random effect model, was used to measure the mean effect size and the Q statistic was used to determine the significance of moderator variables. This study revealed that the students spending their time on homework at medium level had effect on their academic achievement and there were some significant moderators in this relationship.

La tarea es una técnica instructiva común que requiere tiempo extra, energía y esfuerzo aparte del horario escolar. ¿Vale la pena hacer estas inversiones? El objetivo del estudio era investigar si el tiempo dedicado a la tarea tenía algún efecto en el rendimiento académico y determinar los moderadores de la relación entre estos dos términos mediante el uso de datos TIMSS a través del método de metaanálisis. En este estudio de metaanálisis se incluyeron los datos obtenidos de 488 hallazgos independientes de 74 países en las siete encuestas de TIMSS y una muestra de 429,970 estudiantes. Se utilizó el coeficiente de medias estandarizadas, basado en el modelo de efecto aleatorio, para medir el tamaño medio del efecto y el estadístico Q para determinar la significación de las variables moderadoras. El estudio reveló el hecho de que los estudiantes que dedican su tiempo a la tarea en el nivel medio tiene efecto en su rendimiento académico y hubo algunos moderadores significativos de esta relación.

Palabras clave

Cite this article as: Ozyildirim, G. (2022). Time Spent on Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-analysis Study Related to Results of TIMSS. Psicología Educativa, 28 (1) , 13 - 21. https://doi.org/10.5093/psed2021a30

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How Much Time Do College Students Spend on Homework

by Jack Tai | Oct 9, 2019 | Articles

Does college life involve more studying or socializing?

Find out how much time college students need to devote to their homework in order to succeed in class.

We all know that it takes hard work to succeed in college and earn top grades.

To find out more about the time demands of studying and learning, let’s review the average homework amounts of college students.

HowtoLearn.com expert, Jack Tai, CEO of OneClass.com shows how homework improves grades in college and an average of how much time is required.

How Many Hours Do College Students Spend on Homework?

Classes in college are much different from those in high school.

For students in high school, a large part of learning occurs in the classroom with homework used to support class activities.

One of the first thing that college students need to learn is how to read and remember more quickly. It gives them a competitive benefit in their grades and when they learn new information to escalate their career.

Taking a speed reading course that shows you how to learn at the same time is one of the best ways for students to complete their reading assignments and their homework.

However, in college, students spend a shorter period in class and spend more time learning outside of the classroom.

This shift to an independent learning structure means that college students should expect to spend more time on homework than they did during high school.

In college, a good rule of thumb for homework estimates that for each college credit you take, you’ll spend one hour in the classroom and two to three hours on homework each week.

These homework tasks can include readings, working on assignments, or studying for exams.

Based upon these estimates, a three-credit college class would require each week to include approximately three hours attending lectures and six to nine hours of homework.

Extrapolating this out to the 15-credit course load of a full-time student, that would be 15 hours in the classroom and 30 to 45 hours studying and doing homework.

These time estimates demonstrate that college students have significantly more homework than the 10 hours per week average among high school students. In fact, doing homework in college can take as much time as a full-time job.

Students should keep in mind that these homework amounts are averages.

Students will find that some professors assign more or less homework. Students may also find that some classes assign very little homework in the beginning of the semester, but increase later on in preparation for exams or when a major project is due. 

There can even be variation based upon the major with some areas of study requiring more lab work or reading.

Do College Students Do Homework on Weekends?

Based on the quantity of homework in college, it’s nearly certain that students will be spending some of their weekends doing homework.

For example, if each weekday, a student spends three hours in class and spends five hours on homework, there’s still at least five hours of homework to do on the weekend.

When considering how homework schedules can affect learning, it’s important to remember that even though college students face a significant amount of homework, one of the best learning strategies is to space out study sessions into short time blocks.

This includes not just doing homework every day of the week, but also establishing short study blocks in the morning, afternoon, and evening. With this approach, students can avoid cramming on Sunday night to be ready for class.

What’s the Best Way to Get Help with Your Homework?

In college, there are academic resources built into campus life to support learning.

For example, you may have access to an on-campus learning center or tutoring facilities. You may also have the support of teaching assistants or regular office hours.

That’s why OneClass recommends a course like How to Read a Book in a Day and Remember It which gives a c hoice to support your learning. 

Another choice is on demand tutoring.

They send detailed, step-by-step solutions within just 24 hours, and frequently, answers are sent in less than 12 hours.

When students have on-demand access to homework help, it’s possible to avoid the poor grades that can result from unfinished homework.

Plus, 24/7 Homework Help makes it easy to ask a question. Simply snap a photo and upload it to the platform.

That’s all tutors need to get started preparing your solution.

Rather than retyping questions or struggling with math formulas, asking questions and getting answers is as easy as click and go.

Homework Help supports coursework for both high school and college students across a wide range of subjects. Moreover, students can access OneClass’ knowledge base of previously answered homework questions.

Simply browse by subject or search the directory to find out if another student struggled to learn the same class material.

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Homework in America

• 2014 Brown Center Report on American Education

Subscribe to the Brown Center on Education Policy Newsletter

Tom loveless tom loveless former brookings expert @tomloveless99.

March 18, 2014

• 18 min read

Part II of the 2014 Brown Center Report on American Education

Homework!  The topic, no, just the word itself, sparks controversy.  It has for a long time. In 1900, Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies Home Journal , published an impassioned article, “A National Crime at the Feet of Parents,” accusing homework of destroying American youth.  Drawing on the theories of his fellow educational progressive, psychologist G. Stanley Hall (who has since been largely discredited), Bok argued that study at home interfered with children’s natural inclination towards play and free movement, threatened children’s physical and mental health, and usurped the right of parents to decide activities in the home.

The Journal was an influential magazine, especially with parents.  An anti-homework campaign burst forth that grew into a national crusade. [i]   School districts across the land passed restrictions on homework, culminating in a 1901 statewide prohibition of homework in California for any student under the age of 15.  The crusade would remain powerful through 1913, before a world war and other concerns bumped it from the spotlight.  Nevertheless, anti-homework sentiment would remain a touchstone of progressive education throughout the twentieth century.  As a political force, it would lie dormant for years before bubbling up to mobilize proponents of free play and “the whole child.” Advocates would, if educators did not comply, seek to impose homework restrictions through policy making.

Our own century dawned during a surge of anti-homework sentiment. From 1998 to 2003, Newsweek , TIME , and People , all major national publications at the time, ran cover stories on the evils of homework.  TIME ’s 1999 story had the most provocative title, “The Homework Ate My Family: Kids Are Dazed, Parents Are Stressed, Why Piling On Is Hurting Students.” People ’s 2003 article offered a call to arms: “Overbooked: Four Hours of Homework for a Third Grader? Exhausted Kids (and Parents) Fight Back.” Feature stories about students laboring under an onerous homework burden ran in newspapers from coast to coast. Photos of angst ridden children became a journalistic staple.

The 2003 Brown Center Report on American Education included a study investigating the homework controversy.  Examining the most reliable empirical evidence at the time, the study concluded that the dramatic claims about homework were unfounded.  An overwhelming majority of students, at least two-thirds, depending on age, had an hour or less of homework each night.  Surprisingly, even the homework burden of college-bound high school seniors was discovered to be rather light, less than an hour per night or six hours per week. Public opinion polls also contradicted the prevailing story.  Parents were not up in arms about homework.  Most said their children’s homework load was about right.  Parents wanting more homework out-numbered those who wanted less.

Now homework is in the news again.  Several popular anti-homework books fill store shelves (whether virtual or brick and mortar). [ii]   The documentary Race to Nowhere depicts homework as one aspect of an overwrought, pressure-cooker school system that constantly pushes students to perform and destroys their love of learning.  The film’s website claims over 6,000 screenings in more than 30 countries.  In 2011, the New York Times ran a front page article about the homework restrictions adopted by schools in Galloway, NJ, describing “a wave of districts across the nation trying to remake homework amid concerns that high stakes testing and competition for college have fueled a nightly grind that is stressing out children and depriving them of play and rest, yet doing little to raise achievement, especially in elementary grades.”   In the article, Vicki Abeles, the director of Race to Nowhere , invokes the indictment of homework lodged a century ago, declaring, “The presence of homework is negatively affecting the health of our young people and the quality of family time.” [iii] 

A petition for the National PTA to adopt “healthy homework guidelines” on change.org currently has 19,000 signatures.  In September 2013, Atlantic featured an article, “My Daughter’s Homework is Killing Me,” by a Manhattan writer who joined his middle school daughter in doing her homework for a week.  Most nights the homework took more than three hours to complete.

The Current Study

A decade has passed since the last Brown Center Report study of homework, and it’s time for an update.  How much homework do American students have today?  Has the homework burden increased, gone down, or remained about the same?  What do parents think about the homework load?

A word on why such a study is important.  It’s not because the popular press is creating a fiction.  The press accounts are built on the testimony of real students and real parents, people who are very unhappy with the amount of homework coming home from school.  These unhappy people are real—but they also may be atypical.  Their experiences, as dramatic as they are, may not represent the common experience of American households with school-age children.  In the analysis below, data are analyzed from surveys that are methodologically designed to produce reliable information about the experiences of all Americans.  Some of the surveys have existed long enough to illustrate meaningful trends.  The question is whether strong empirical evidence confirms the anecdotes about overworked kids and outraged parents.

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provide a good look at trends in homework for nearly the past three decades.  Table 2-1 displays NAEP data from 1984-2012.  The data are from the long-term trend NAEP assessment’s student questionnaire, a survey of homework practices featuring both consistently-worded questions and stable response categories.  The question asks: “How much time did you spend on homework yesterday?”  Responses are shown for NAEP’s three age groups: 9, 13, and 17. [iv]

Today’s youngest students seem to have more homework than in the past.  The first three rows of data for age 9 reveal a shift away from students having no homework, declining from 35% in 1984 to 22% in 2012.  A slight uptick occurred from the low of 18% in 2008, however, so the trend may be abating.  The decline of the “no homework” group is matched by growth in the percentage of students with less than an hour’s worth, from 41% in 1984 to 57% in 2012. The share of students with one to two hours of homework changed very little over the entire 28 years, comprising 12% of students in 2012.  The group with the heaviest load, more than two hours of homework, registered at 5% in 2012.  It was 6% in 1984.

The amount of homework for 13-year-olds appears to have lightened slightly. Students with one to two hours of homework declined from 29% to 23%.  The next category down (in terms of homework load), students with less than an hour, increased from 36% to 44%.  One can see, by combining the bottom two rows, that students with an hour or more of homework declined steadily from 1984 to 2008 (falling from 38% to 27%) and then ticked up to 30% in 2012.  The proportion of students with the heaviest load, more than two hours, slipped from 9% in 1984 to 7% in 2012 and ranged between 7-10% for the entire period.

For 17-year-olds, the homework burden has not varied much.  The percentage of students with no homework has increased from 22% to 27%.  Most of that gain occurred in the 1990s. Also note that the percentage of 17-year-olds who had homework but did not do it was 11% in 2012, the highest for the three NAEP age groups.  Adding that number in with the students who didn’t have homework in the first place means that more than one-third of seventeen year olds (38%) did no homework on the night in question in 2012.  That compares with 33% in 1984.  The segment of the 17-year-old population with more than two hours of homework, from which legitimate complaints of being overworked might arise, has been stuck in the 10%-13% range.

The NAEP data point to four main conclusions:

• With one exception, the homework load has remained remarkably stable since 1984.
• The exception is nine-year-olds.  They have experienced an increase in homework, primarily because many students who once did not have any now have some.  The percentage of nine-year-olds with no homework fell by 13 percentage points, and the percentage with less than an hour grew by 16 percentage points.
• Of the three age groups, 17-year-olds have the most bifurcated distribution of the homework burden.   They have the largest percentage of kids with no homework (especially when the homework shirkers are added in) and the largest percentage with more than two hours.
• NAEP data do not support the idea that a large and growing number of students have an onerous amount of homework.  For all three age groups, only a small percentage of students report more than two hours of homework.  For 1984-2012, the size of the two hours or more groups ranged from 5-6% for age 9, 6-10% for age 13, and 10-13% for age 17.

Note that the item asks students how much time they spent on homework “yesterday.”  That phrasing has the benefit of immediacy, asking for an estimate of precise, recent behavior rather than an estimate of general behavior for an extended, unspecified period.  But misleading responses could be generated if teachers lighten the homework of NAEP participants on the night before the NAEP test is given.  That’s possible. [v] Such skewing would not affect trends if it stayed about the same over time and in the same direction (teachers assigning less homework than usual on the day before NAEP).  Put another way, it would affect estimates of the amount of homework at any single point in time but not changes in the amount of homework between two points in time.

A check for possible skewing is to compare the responses above with those to another homework question on the NAEP questionnaire from 1986-2004 but no longer in use. [vi]   It asked students, “How much time do you usually spend on homework each day?” Most of the response categories have different boundaries from the “last night” question, making the data incomparable.  But the categories asking about no homework are comparable.  Responses indicating no homework on the “usual” question in 2004 were: 2% for age 9-year-olds, 5% for 13 year olds, and 12% for 17-year-olds.  These figures are much less than the ones reported in Table 2-1 above.  The “yesterday” data appear to overstate the proportion of students typically receiving no homework.

The story is different for the “heavy homework load” response categories.  The “usual” question reported similar percentages as the “yesterday” question.  The categories representing the most amount of homework were “more than one hour” for age 9 and “more than two hours” for ages 13 and 17.   In 2004, 12% of 9-year-olds said they had more than one hour of daily homework, while 8% of 13-year-olds and 12% of 17-year-olds said they had more than two hours.  For all three age groups, those figures declined from1986 to 2004. The decline for age 17 was quite large, falling from 17% in 1986 to 12% in 2004.  

The bottom line: regardless of how the question is posed, NAEP data do not support the view that the homework burden is growing, nor do they support the belief that the proportion of students with a lot of homework has increased in recent years.  The proportion of students with no homework is probably under-reported on the long-term trend NAEP.  But the upper bound of students with more than two hours of daily homework appears to be about 15%–and that is for students in their final years of high school.

College Freshmen Look Back  

There is another good source of information on high school students’ homework over several decades.  The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA conducts an annual survey of college freshmen that began in 1966.  In 1986, the survey started asking a series of questions regarding how students spent time in the final year of high school.  Figure 2-1 shows the 2012 percentages for the dominant activities.  More than half of college freshmen say they spent at least six hours per week socializing with friends (66.2%) and exercising/sports (53.0%).  About 40% devoted that much weekly time to paid employment.

Homework comes in fourth pace. Only 38.4% of students said they spent at least six hours per week studying or doing homework. When these students were high school seniors, it was not an activity central to their out of school lives.  That is quite surprising.  Think about it.  The survey is confined to the nation’s best students, those attending college.  Gone are high school dropouts.  Also not included are students who go into the military or attain full time employment immediately after high school.  And yet only a little more than one-third of the sampled students, devoted more than six hours per week to homework and studying when they were on the verge of attending college.

Another notable finding from the UCLA survey is how the statistic is trending (see Figure 2-2).  In 1986, 49.5% reported spending six or more hours per week studying and doing homework.  By 2002, the proportion had dropped to 33.4%.  In 2012, as noted in Figure 2-1, the statistic had bounced off the historical lows to reach 38.4%.  It is slowly rising but still sits sharply below where it was in 1987.

What Do Parents Think?

Met Life has published an annual survey of teachers since 1984.  In 1987 and 2007, the survey included questions focusing on homework and expanded to sample both parents and students on the topic. Data are broken out for secondary and elementary parents and for students in grades 3-6 and grades 7-12 (the latter not being an exact match with secondary parents because of K-8 schools).

Table 2-2 shows estimates of homework from the 2007 survey.  Respondents were asked to estimate the amount of homework on a typical school day (Monday-Friday).  The median estimate of each group of respondents is shaded.  As displayed in the first column, the median estimate for parents of an elementary student is that their child devotes about 30 minutes to homework on the typical weekday.  Slightly more than half (52%) estimate 30 minutes or less; 48% estimate 45 minutes or more.  Students in grades 3-6 (third column) give a median estimate that is a bit higher than their parents’ (45 minutes), with almost two-thirds (63%) saying 45 minutes or less is the typical weekday homework load.

One hour of homework is the median estimate for both secondary parents and students in grade 7-12, with 55% of parents reporting an hour or less and about two-thirds (67%) of students reporting the same.  As for the prevalence of the heaviest homework loads, 11% of secondary parents say their children spend more than two hours on weekday homework, and 12% is the corresponding figure for students in grades 7-12.

The Met Life surveys in 1987 and 2007 asked parents to evaluate the amount and quality of homework.  Table 2-3 displays the results.  There was little change over the two decades separating the two surveys.  More than 60% of parents rate the amount of homework as good or excellent, and about two-thirds give such high ratings to the quality of the homework their children are receiving.  The proportion giving poor ratings to either the quantity or quality of homework did not exceed 10% on either survey.

Parental dissatisfaction with homework comes in two forms: those who feel schools give too much homework and those who feel schools do not give enough.  The current wave of journalism about unhappy parents is dominated by those who feel schools give too much homework.  How big is this group?  Not very big (see Figure 2-3). On the Met Life survey, 60% of parents felt schools were giving the right amount of homework, 25% wanted more homework, and only 15% wanted less.

National surveys on homework are infrequent, but the 2006-2007 period had more than one.  A poll conducted by Public Agenda in 2006 reported similar numbers as the Met Life survey: 68% of parents describing the homework load as “about right,” 20% saying there is “too little homework,” and 11% saying there is “too much homework.”  A 2006 AP-AOL poll found the highest percentage of parents reporting too much homework, 19%.  But even in that poll, they were outnumbered by parents believing there is too little homework (23%), and a clear majority (57%) described the load as “about right.”  A 2010 local survey of Chicago parents conducted by the Chicago Tribune reported figures similar to those reported above: approximately two-thirds of parents saying their children’s homework load is “about right,” 21% saying it’s not enough, and 12% responding that the homework load is too much.

Summary and Discussion

In recent years, the press has been filled with reports of kids over-burdened with homework and parents rebelling against their children’s oppressive workload. The data assembled above call into question whether that portrait is accurate for the typical American family.  Homework typically takes an hour per night.  The homework burden of students rarely exceeds two hours a night.  The upper limit of students with two or more hours per night is about 15% nationally—and that is for juniors or seniors in high school.  For younger children, the upper boundary is about 10% who have such a heavy load.  Polls show that parents who want less homework range from 10%-20%, and that they are outnumbered—in every national poll on the homework question—by parents who want more homework, not less.  The majority of parents describe their children’s homework burden as about right.

So what’s going on?  Where are the homework horror stories coming from?

The Met Life survey of parents is able to give a few hints, mainly because of several questions that extend beyond homework to other aspects of schooling.  The belief that homework is burdensome is more likely held by parents with a larger set of complaints and concerns.  They are alienated from their child’s school.  About two in five parents (19%) don’t believe homework is important.  Compared to other parents, these parents are more likely to say too much homework is assigned (39% vs. 9%), that what is assigned is just busywork (57% vs. 36%), and that homework gets in the way of their family spending time together (51% vs. 15%).  They are less likely to rate the quality of homework as excellent (3% vs. 23%) or to rate the availability and responsiveness of teachers as excellent (18% vs. 38%). [vii]

They can also convince themselves that their numbers are larger than they really are.  Karl Taro Greenfeld, the author of the Atlantic article mentioned above, seems to fit that description.  “Every parent I know in New York City comments on how much homework their children have,” Mr. Greenfeld writes.  As for those parents who do not share this view? “There is always a clique of parents who are happy with the amount of homework. In fact, they would prefer more .  I tend not to get along with that type of parent.” [viii] 

Mr. Greenfeld’s daughter attends a selective exam school in Manhattan, known for its rigorous expectations and, yes, heavy homework load.  He had also complained about homework in his daughter’s previous school in Brentwood, CA.  That school was a charter school.  After Mr. Greenfeld emailed several parents expressing his complaints about homework in that school, the school’s vice-principal accused Mr. Greenfeld of cyberbullying.  The lesson here is that even schools of choice are not immune from complaints about homework.

The homework horror stories need to be read in a proper perspective.  They seem to originate from the very personal discontents of a small group of parents.  They do not reflect the experience of the average family with a school-age child.  That does not diminish these stories’ power to command the attention of school officials or even the public at large. But it also suggests a limited role for policy making in settling such disputes.  Policy is a blunt instrument.  Educators, parents, and kids are in the best position to resolve complaints about homework on a case by case basis.  Complaints about homework have existed for more than a century, and they show no signs of going away.

Part II Notes:

[i]Brian Gill and Steven Schlossman, “A Sin Against Childhood: Progressive Education and the Crusade to Abolish Homework, 1897-1941,” American Journal of Education , vol. 105, no. 1 (Nov., 1996), 27-66.  Also see Brian P. Gill and Steven L. Schlossman, “Villain or Savior? The American Discourse on Homework, 1850-2003,” Theory into Practice , 43, 3 (Summer 2004), pp. 174-181.

[ii] Bennett, Sara, and Nancy Kalish.  The Case Against Homework:  How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It   (New York:  Crown, 2006).  Buell, John.  Closing the Book on Homework: Enhancing Public Education and Freeing Family Time . (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004). Kohn, Alfie.    The Homework Myth:  Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing  (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2006).  Kralovec, Etta, and John Buell.  The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning  (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).

[iii] Hu, Winnie, “ New Recruit in Homework Revolt: The Principal ,” New York Times , June 15, 2011, page a1.

[iv] Data for other years are available on the NAEP Data Explorer.  For Table 1, the starting point of 1984 was chosen because it is the first year all three ages were asked the homework question.  The two most recent dates (2012 and 2008) were chosen to show recent changes, and the two years in the 1990s to show developments during that decade.

[v] NAEP’s sampling design lessens the probability of skewing the homework figure.  Students are randomly drawn from a school population, meaning that an entire class is not tested.  Teachers would have to either single out NAEP students for special homework treatment or change their established homework routine for the whole class just to shelter NAEP participants from homework.  Sampling designs that draw entact classrooms for testing (such as TIMSS) would be more vulnerable to this effect.  Moreover, students in middle and high school usually have several different teachers during the day, meaning that prior knowledge of a particular student’s participation in NAEP would probably be limited to one or two teachers.

[vi] NAEP Question B003801 for 9 year olds and B003901 for 13- and 17-year olds.

[vii] Met Life, Met Life Survey of the American Teacher: The Homework Experience , November 13, 2007, pp. 21-22.

[viii] Greenfeld, Karl Taro, “ My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me ,” The Atlantic , September 18, 2013.

Education Policy K-12 Education

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Thinley Choden

May 3, 2024

Ghulam Omar Qargha, Rachel Dyl, Sreehari Ravindranath, Nariman Moustafa, Erika Faz de la Paz

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Rebecca Winthrop, Sweta Shah

May 2, 2024

How Much Time Should Be Spent on Homework?

At the elementary level homework should be brief, at your child’s ability level and involve frequent, voluntary and high interest activities. Young students require high levels of feedback and/or supervision to help them complete assignments correctly. Accurate homework completion is influenced by your child’s ability, the difficulty of the task, and the amount of feedback your child receives. When assigning homework, your child’s teachers may struggle to create a balance at this age between ability, task difficulty and feedback. Unfortunately, there are no simple guiding principles.

We can assure you, however, that your input and feedback on a nightly basis is an essential component in helping your child benefit from the homework experience.

What is the recommended time in elementary school?

In first through third grade, students should receive one to three assignments per week, taking them no more than fifteen to twenty minutes. In fourth through sixth grade, students should receive two to four assignments per week, lasting between fifteen and forty-five minutes. At this age, the primarily goal of homework is to help your child develop the independent work and learning skills that will become critical in the higher grades. In the upper grades, the more time spent on homework the greater the achievement gains.

What is the recommended time in middle and high school?

For students in middle and high school grades there are greater overall benefits from time engaged in practicing and thinking about school work. These benefits do not appear to depend as much upon immediate supervision or feedback as they do for elementary students. In seventh through ninth grade we recommend students receive three to five sets of assignments per week, lasting between forty-five and seventy-five minutes per set. In high school students will receive four to five sets of homework per week, taking them between seventy-five and 150 minutes per set to complete.

As children progress through school, homework and the amount of time engaged in homework increases in importance. Due to the significance of homework at the older age levels, it is not surprising that there is more homework assigned. Furthermore, homework is always assigned in college preparatory classes and assigned at least three quarters of the time in special education and vocational training classes. Thus at any age, homework may indicate our academic expectations of children.

Regardless of the amount of homework assigned, many students unsuccessful or struggling in school spend less rather than more time engaged in homework. It is not surprising that students spending less time completing homework may eventually not achieve as consistently as those who complete their homework.

Does this mean that time devoted to homework is the key component necessary for achievement?

We are not completely certain. Some American educators have concluded that if students in America spent as much time doing homework as students in Asian countries they might perform academically as well. It is tempting to assume such a cause and effect relationship.

However, this relationship appears to be an overly simple conclusion. We know that homework is important as one of several influential factors in school success. However, other variables, including student ability, achievement, motivation and teaching quality influence the time students spend with homework tasks. Many students and their parents have told us they experience less difficulty being motivated and completing homework in classes in which they enjoyed the subject, the instruction, the assignments and the teachers.

The benefits from homework are the greatest for students completing the most homework and doing so correctly. Thus, students who devote time to homework are probably on a path to improved achievement. This path also includes higher quality instruction, greater achievement motivation and better skill levels.

Authors: Dr. Sam Goldstein and Dr. Sydney Zentall

How do people across the world spend their time? How do daily activities differ across countries, and how do these differences matter for people’s lives? Explore data and research on time use.

By Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Charlie Giattino and Max Roser

This page was first published in November 2020, and last revised in February 2024.

Time is the ultimate limited resource. Every one of us has the same “time budget” — 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, giving a total of 8,760 hours — each year of our lives .

How do we spend our time? There are many commonalities across the world: we all sleep, work, eat, and enjoy leisure time. But there are also important differences in the freedom people have to spend time on the things they value most.

Studying how people across the world spend their time provides an important perspective for understanding living conditions, economic opportunities, and general well-being.

Here we present the data on time use. We explore how it differs across countries and over time and how these differences matter for people’s lives.

On our related topic page on Working Hours , you can read more about people’s time spent working and how this varies around the world.

See all interactive charts on time use ↓

Related topics

Working Hours

How much time do people across the world spend working? How have working hours changed over time, and what do these changes matter for people’s lives? Explore data and research on working hours.

Loneliness and Social Connections

In this topic page, we explore data on loneliness and social connections and review available evidence on the link between social connections and well-being.

Time use from the perspective of an average day

How do people across the world spend their time and what does this tell us about living conditions.

Sleep, work, eat, leisure — at a high level most of us spend time on similar activities. But just how similar are the daily activities of people across the world?

This is something worth considering, not just to serve our curiosity but because differences in the way we spend time give us meaningful perspectives on living conditions, economic opportunities, and general well-being.

Here we take a look at the data on time use. We explore some of the key patterns that emerge from cross-country time use surveys, and then dig deeper to understand how these differences matter for people’s well-being.

Daily activities: similarities and differences across countries

In the chart below we compare the average time spent across several common activities.

The data comes from the OECD and brings together estimates from time diaries where respondents are asked to record the sequence of what they did over a specific day, as well as from general questionnaires where respondents are asked to recall the amount of time spent on different activities on a specific day in the previous week. 1

The first thing that jumps out from this chart is that there are indeed many similarities across countries.

This is not surprising — most of us try to split our days into “work, rest, and fun”, and so there are some predictable patterns. We spend the most time working and sleeping. Together, paid work, housework, leisure, eating, and sleeping take 80–90% of all the 1440 minutes in a day.

Work is an important activity where we see large differences. Countries are sorted by paid work hours in the chart — from highest to lowest. On an average day, people in China and Mexico spend almost twice as much time on paid work as people in Italy and France do. This is a general pattern: people in richer countries can afford to work less . Keep in mind that this chart shows the average for all people in the working age bracket, from 15 to 64 years, whether or not they are employed. 3

Read more on our page on working hours:

Differences in demographics , education , and economic prosperity all contribute to these inequalities in work and time use.

But what’s clear in the chart here is that some differences in time use are not well explained by economic or demographic differences. In the UK, for example, people spend more time working than in France, but in both countries, people report spending a similar amount of time on leisure activities.

Cultural differences are likely to play a role here. The French seem to spend much more time eating than the British — and in this respect, the data goes in line with stereotypes about food culture. People in France, Greece, Italy, and Spain report spending more time eating than people in most other European countries. The country where people spend the least time eating and drinking is the USA.

Going beyond averages: The gender gap in leisure time

Going beyond national averages reveals important inequalities within countries. The gender gap in leisure time, for example, is a key dimension along which large inequalities exist.

The chart here relies on the same time-use data described above but it shows total leisure time for men and women separately.

Time for men is shown on the horizontal axis, while time for women appears on the vertical axis. The dotted diagonal line denotes "gender parity", so the further away a country is from the diagonal line, the larger the difference between men and women.

As we can see, in all countries the average leisure time for men is higher than for women — all bubbles are below the diagonal line — but in some countries, the gaps are much larger. In Norway, the difference is very small, while in Portugal men report much more leisure time than women.

A key factor driving these differences in leisure time is the gender gap in unpaid work. As we explain in detail on our page on women’s employment , women are responsible for a disproportionate amount of unpaid work and have less leisure as a result. 4

Women's Employment

How does women’s labor force participation differ across countries? How has it changed over time? What is behind these differences and changes?

Why should we care about differences in time use?

Every single one of us has the same “time budget”: 24 hours per day and 365 days per year. But of course, not all of us can choose to spend time on the activities that we enjoy most. Differences in our freedom to allocate time to the things we enjoy are the main reasons why time-use data is important for studying living conditions.

In the UK, researchers from the Centre for Time Use Research linked time-use diaries with the respondents’ assessments of enjoyment, on a scale from 1 to 7, to better understand the connection between time use and well-being.

The chart here, which we’ve adapted from the book "What We Really Do All Day’ , by professors Jonathan Gershuny and Oriel Sullivan, shows the results. The estimates correspond to average reported levels of enjoyment for each activity, with confidence intervals. 5

We see that the most-enjoyed activities involve rest or leisure activities — such as eating out, sleeping, going to sports events, playing computer games, or attending cultural performances. The activities receiving the lowest ratings include doing school homework, looking for a job, or doing housework.

The activity where people show the greatest variation in enjoyment is working a “Second Job”. This likely reflects the difference between people who work a second job because they want to, and those who work a second job because they have to .

So what do we learn from this?

First, we learn that the enjoyment of activities is, at least to some degree, predictable and stable. This means we can take activity groups and make meaningful comparisons across groups of people. Economists, for example, often classify any activity with an enjoyment level below work as a “non-leisure activity”, to measure trends in leisure across people and time. 7

But beyond this, and more importantly, this confirms that time-use is informative about well-being.

The fact that there is a very clear and predictable pattern in the enjoyment of activities suggests that differences in time use do, indeed, give us meaningful perspectives on living conditions and economic opportunities. In countries where people do more paid and unpaid work, and have less time for leisure, their enjoyment — and happiness and life satisfaction — levels are likely to be lower.

Time use from the perspective of the life cycle

Who do we spend time with across our lifetime.

As we go through life we build personal relationships with different people — family, friends, coworkers, partners.

These relationships, which are deeply important to all of us , evolve with time. As we grow older we build new relationships while others transform or fade, and towards the end of life, many of us spend a lot of time alone.

Taking the big picture over the entire life course: Who do we actually spend our time with?

From adolescence to old age: who do we spend our time with?

To understand how social connections evolve throughout our lives we can look at survey data on how much time people spend with others, and who that time is spent with.

The chart here shows the amount of time that people in the US report spending in the company of others, based on their age.

The data comes from time-use surveys, where people are asked to list all the activities that they perform over a full day, and the people who were there during each activity. We currently only have data with this granularity for the US — time-use surveys are common across many countries, but what is special about the US is that respondents of the American Time Use Survey are asked to list everyone who was present during each activity.

The numbers in this chart are based on averages for a cross-section of American society — people are only interviewed once, but we have brought together a decade of surveys, tabulating the average amount of time that survey respondents of different ages report spending with other people . 8

Who we spend our time with changes a lot over the course of life

When we’re young — particularly in our teens — we spend a lot of our time with friends, parents, siblings, and extended family.

As we enter our 20s, time with friends, siblings, and parents starts to drop off quickly. Instead, we start spending an increasing amount of time with partners and children. The chart shows an average across Americans, so for those that have children the time spent with children is even higher, since the average is pulled down by those without children.

As the chart shows, this continues throughout our 30s, 40s, and 50s — over this period of their life, Americans spend much of their time with partners, children, and, unsurprisingly, co-workers.

For those 60 and older, we see a significant drop-off in time spent with co-workers. This makes sense, considering many people in the US enter retirement in their mid-60s . We see that this time is partly displaced by more time with partners.

How about the number of people we interact with? This chart suggests that the number of people with whom we interact is highest around 40, but then things change substantially after that. And this is perhaps the most conspicuous trend in the chart: above 40, people spend an increasing amount of time alone.

Older people spend a lot of time alone

Older people spend a large amount of time alone and it is understandable why — time spent alone increases with age because this is when health typically deteriorates and people lose relatives and friends.

Indeed, many people who are older than 60 live alone as this chart shows clearly: living alone is particularly common for older adults.

Another interesting point here is that the share of people across all age groups who live alone has been rising over time.

This is part of a more general global trend — if you want to read more about the global "rise of living alone", we provide a detailed account of this trend across countries in this article:

Older people spend more time alone, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lonely

The data shows that as we become older we tend to spend more and more time alone. What’s more, the data also shows that older people today spend more time alone than older people did in the past.

We might think older people are therefore more lonely — but this is not necessarily the case.

Spending time alone is not the same as feeling lonely. This is a point that is well recognized by researchers, and one which has been confirmed empirically across countries. Surveys that ask people about living arrangements, time use, and feelings of loneliness find that solitude, by itself, is not a good predictor of loneliness.

You can read our overview of the evidence in our article:

Are people more likely to be lonely in so-called 'individualistic' societies?

In countries such as Denmark and Switzerland, it is very common for people to live alone; but contrary to what many believe, this does not translate into higher loneliness. Loneliness and aloneness are not the same.

So, what about loneliness? If we focus on self-reported loneliness, there is little evidence of an upward trend over time in the US, and importantly, it’s not the case that loneliness keeps going up as we become older.

In fact, a recent study based on surveys that track the same individuals over time found that after age 50 — which is the earliest age of participants in the analysis — loneliness tended to decrease, until about 75, after which it began to increase again. 9

Taking the evidence together, the message is not that we should be sad about the prospect of aging, but rather that we should recognize the fact that social connections are complex.

We often look at the amount of time spent with others as a marker of social well-being — but the quality of time spent with others, and our expectations, matter even more for our feelings of connection and loneliness.

Additional information

In the chart where we plot the amount of time that people in the US report spending in the company of others, it’s important to keep in mind that we are taking a look at a cross-section of society. This means that we are actually seeing the result of two underlying trends.

On one hand, we see the effect of aging on social connections (we relate to different people and reallocate time as we go through different stages of life), but we also see the effect of cohort trends (compared to people in the past, today’s older generations in the US tend to be healthier and richer , and might also have different expectations, preferences, and opportunities).

Disentangling these two effects is difficult, so it is important to keep in mind that at least some of the age gradients we observe might be partly explained by cohort changes, rather than life-cycle trends.

This is why it’s important to rely not only on cross-sectional data but also on surveys that track the same individuals over time.

Interactive charts on time use

The "time-diary method" is generally more reliable and allows a richer analysis of routines, because it measures not only aggregate times but also sequences and clock-times. Time-diary data is less common, but it is available for some countries from the Multinational Time Use Study . We explore time-use "tempograms" from the MTUS in a forthcoming companion post.

OECD (2020) Time Use Database.

Because these estimates include people who are not employed, they are much lower than the estimates of working hours  per worker present elsewhere . The estimates also differ because of differences in the sources: time-use surveys compared to labor force surveys and national accounts data.

If you want to dig deeper you can explore gender differences across all other activities directly from our source, via the OECD Data Portal . You can read more about within-country inequalities in time use along other dimensions, such as income and education, in this Brookings Paper , where the authors focus on the "middle-class time squeeze" in the US.

Sawhill, I. V., & Guyot, K. (2020). The Middle Class Time Squeeze. Economic Studies at Brookings. Brookings Institution.

The underlying data comes from time-use diaries where respondents are asked to record the sequence of what they do over a specific day, and how much they enjoy each "episode" (i.e. what they do) on a scale from 1 to 7. All episodes reported are then coded and grouped into similar activities. To arrive at the mean enjoyment scores, the authors multiply the duration of each episode where the activity category concerned is the primary activity recorded, by the enjoyment level to arrive at the total enjoyment score for that episode. Then they sum these total enjoyment scores for each category of activity across the day, and finally divide these daily enjoyment total scores for each activity by the amount of time devoted to the activity. In this way, they arrive at an appropriately weighted mean enjoyment level for each activity across all those who engage in it. For more details see Gershuny, J., & Sullivan, O. (2019). What We Really Do All Day: Insights from the Centre for Time Use Research. Penguin UK.

Gershuny, J., & Sullivan, O. (2019). What We Really Do All Day: Insights from the Centre for Time Use Research. Penguin UK.

You can find a very clear and complete explanation of this in Ramey, V. A., & Francis, N. (2009). A century of work and leisure. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 1(2), 189-224.

When interpreting this chart it’s important to bear in mind that the relationships used to categorize people are not exhaustive (i.e., survey respondents could also list being with people who didn’t fit any of the listed categories, or for whom a relationship was unclear or unknown — we do not count these instances in the estimates). Additionally, time spent with multiple people can be counted more than once; so attending a party with friends and your spouse, for example, would show up for both “friends” and “partner” in our estimates. The implication is that companion categories cannot be stacked to add up the total time spent in the company of others.

Hawkley, L. C., Wroblewski, K., Kaiser, T., Luhmann, M., & Schumm, L. P. (2019). Are US older adults getting lonelier? Age, period, and cohort differences. Psychology and Aging, 34(8), 1144.

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Homework and precious time

School, rest and exercise.

Letter of the Day

Sir, – Your article on levels of unhappiness among girls in Ireland mentions 70 minutes of recommended exercise per day (“Less than a third of girls aged 10-17 report feeling very happy with their lives, study says”, News, May 2nd).

My 14-year-old daughter is either commuting or at school from 7.30am to 4.45pm. She gets around two hours of homework per night. She also has to eat, rest and sleep, and ideally spend some time with her family every day. Schools need to look at how they can justify monopolising children’s precious time with homework. As a salaried worker, I would lose my mind if I had to do another two hours of work at home after my usual work day. Surely 10 minutes at the end of each lesson to answer some questions demonstrating an understanding of what’s been covered would suffice. Can advisers and policymakers please take a long hard look at this fraught issue? As it stands, children don’t have a hope of getting their 70 minutes of daily exercise, which would do them so much more good than however long they spend sitting at their homework each day. If schools could encourage this exercise instead of endless homework, we might all be happier. – Yours, etc,

SINÉAD KELLY,

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How much time should you spend sitting versus standing? New research reveals the perfect mix for optimal health

Postdoctoral research fellow at Swinburne University Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

Disclosure statement

Christian Brakenridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Swinburne University of Technology provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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People have a pretty intuitive sense of what is healthy – standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall health and getting good sleep is imperative .

However, if exercise in the evening may disrupt our sleep, or make us feel the need to be more sedentary to recover, a key question emerges – what is the best way to balance our 24 hours to optimise our health?

Our research attempted to answer this for risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. We found the optimal amount of sleep was 8.3 hours, while for light activity and moderate to vigorous activity, it was best to get 2.2 hours each.

Finding the right balance

Current health guidelines recommend you stick to a sensible regime of moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity 2.5–5 hours per week.

However mounting evidence now suggests how you spend your day can have meaningful ramifications for your health. In addition to moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity, this means the time you spend sitting, standing, doing light physical activity (such as walking around your house or office) and sleeping.

Our research looked at more than 2,000 adults who wore body sensors that could interpret their physical behaviours, for seven days. This gave us a sense of how they spent their average 24 hours.

At the start of the study participants had their waist circumference, blood sugar and insulin sensitivity measured. The body sensor and assessment data was matched and analysed then tested against health risk markers — such as a heart disease and stroke risk score — to create a model.

Using this model, we fed through thousands of permutations of 24 hours and found the ones with the estimated lowest associations with heart disease risk and blood-glucose levels. This created many optimal mixes of sitting, standing, light and moderate intensity activity.

When we looked at waist circumference, blood sugar, insulin sensitivity and a heart disease and stroke risk score, we noted differing optimal time zones. Where those zones mutually overlapped was ascribed the optimal zone for heart disease and diabetes risk.

You’re doing more physical activity than you think

We found light-intensity physical activity (defined as walking less than 100 steps per minute) – such as walking to the water cooler, the bathroom, or strolling casually with friends – had strong associations with glucose control, and especially in people with type 2 diabetes. This light-intensity physical activity is likely accumulated intermittently throughout the day rather than being a purposeful bout of light exercise.

Our experimental evidence shows that interrupting our sitting regularly with light-physical activity (such as taking a 3–5 minute walk every hour) can improve our metabolism, especially so after lunch.

While the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity time might seem a quite high, at more than 2 hours a day, we defined it as more than 100 steps per minute. This equates to a brisk walk.

It should be noted that these findings are preliminary. This is the first study of heart disease and diabetes risk and the “optimal” 24 hours, and the results will need further confirmation with longer prospective studies.

The data is also cross-sectional. This means that the estimates of time use are correlated with the disease risk factors, meaning it’s unclear whether how participants spent their time influences their risk factors or whether those risk factors influence how someone spends their time.

Australia’s adult physical activity guidelines need updating

Australia’s physical activity guidelines currently only recommend exercise intensity and time. A new set of guidelines are being developed to incorporate 24-hour movement. Soon Australians will be able to use these guidelines to examine their 24 hours and understand where they can make improvements.

While our new research can inform the upcoming guidelines, we should keep in mind that the recommendations are like a north star: something to head towards to improve your health. In principle this means reducing sitting time where possible, increasing standing and light-intensity physical activity, increasing more vigorous intensity physical activity, and aiming for a healthy sleep of 7.5–9 hours per night.

Beneficial changes could come in the form of reducing screen time in the evening or opting for an active commute over driving commute, or prioritising an earlier bed time over watching television in the evening.

It’s also important to acknowledge these are recommendations for an able adult. We all have different considerations, and above all, movement should be fun.

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Time's money, but how much? Here's what Americans think an hour of their time is worth

Time is precious, and Americans know it.

To gauge how precious, financial planning firm Empower asked 2,204 adults between March 11 and 14 how much money they thought an hour of their time was worth.

On average, Americans valued their time at $240 an hour. And based on a standard 40-hour week, that puts their perceived value at $499,200 a year, or nearly eight times higher than the average U.S. salary of $59,384.

Because people value their time so highly, many are willing to spend money to get a little more or achieve a happier life, the survey showed.

“It's a race to find happiness, whether that’s a better work-life balance or a $7 daily cup of coffee,” Empower said.

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What age group values their time the most?

How much value you put on time depends on your age , the data showed.

• Millennials (born from 1981 to 1996) place the highest value on their time, saying an hour was worth $328.84, with a quarter of them pegging that at more than $500 – the highest percentage of any generation. Only 6% of Boomers priced an hour at $500 or more.
• Gen Z (born from 1997 to 2012) said an hour of their time would cost $266.92.
• Gen X (born from 1965 to 1980) said their time was worth $215.90 an hour.
• Boomers (from 1946 to 1964) said an hour of their time is worth $137.19.

Millennials value their time more because of their sense of lost time, like the 2008 financial crisis when many entered the workforce, or the volatility later caused by the pandemic. Record high levels of student debt and some of the highest inflation and mortgage rates in decades, which millennials say have kept them from buying homes , have also rattled them, Empower said.

How much would you give up to get back an hour of your time?

Time is so precious that 26% of Americans said they’d take a 15% pay cut for more free time. Millennials (41%) were the most willing to do so, Empower said.

Americans also would pay someone to do things for them to regain time.

• Thirty-six percent said they’d rather pay more to get an item delivered instead of driving 10 minutes to get it, the survey said.
• More than 2 out of 5 Americans said outsourcing household chores improves work-life balance. One-third of Gen Z would pay up to $5,000 a year to save time by forgoing tasks like cleaning and yard work, and 36% of millennials would shell out as much as $10,000 for someone to take on in-house chores and cook meals.
• Americans don’t like managing their money. More than one-third of Americans procrastinate when it comes to money tasks like paying their bills, and 26% said they’d spend $5,000 annually to have someone else manage their long-term financials, investments, and savings.

What makes people feel wealthy?

Wealth isn’t just about your bank account for most Americans. Sixty-three percent said they “feel wealthy” if they have enough time to spend with family and friends , the survey said.

Nearly one-third feel comfortable taking on debt if it buys more free time or a memorable experience.

Almost 40% of Americans say saving time is more important than saving money, and that figure rises to 52% for millennials, the survey showed.

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What about retirement savings?

Almost half of Americans feel they’re running out of time to save for retirement , even though 44% say they started putting money away early enough, the survey said.

Forty-three percent said they wish they could go back in time to start saving sooner, but nearly half said they’d rather have a longer retirement with less money than retire later in life with more, the survey showed.

Generally, Americans remain “optimistic,” though, and “people may be further along than they think,” the survey said.

The average 401(k) balance is $291,810, and for people in their 50s approaching retirement age, it jumps to $580,259, according to Empower Personal Dashboard data.

Medora Lee is a money, markets, and personal finance reporter at USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected] and  subscribe to our free Daily Money newsletter  for personal finance tips and business news every Monday through Friday.

In a high-stakes test, Boeing will launch NASA astronauts to space for the first time

After years of delays, Boeing is finally set to launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on its Starliner spacecraft.

The capsule is scheduled to lift off Monday at 10:34 p.m. ET, atop an Atlas V rocket at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams will pilot the Starliner on its inaugural crewed flight — a crucial final test before NASA can authorize Boeing to conduct routine flights to and from the space station for the agency.

The stakes are high. This will be Boeing’s first launch with humans aboard its spaceship, and it comes after years of delays, technical setbacks and significant budget overruns. If successful, the flight will enable Boeing to challenge the dominance held by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has been ferrying NASA astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost since 2020 .

Both companies’ spacecraft were developed under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which was established after its space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. The goal: incentivize and help fund the creation of new, commercially built vehicles capable of flying to and from low-Earth orbit.

At a preflight briefing last week, Wilmore said safety is paramount and that previous Starliner launch attempts — both uncrewed and crewed — were delayed because the capsule simply was not ready until now.

“Why do we think it’s as safe as possible? We wouldn’t be standing here if we didn’t,” Wilmore told reporters.

Still, there are inherent risks with any new spacecraft or rocket.

“Do we expect it to go perfectly? This is the first human flight of the spacecraft,” Wilmore said. “I’m sure we’ll find things out. That’s why we do this. This is a test flight.”

The plan is for the astronauts to dock with the space station the following day and spend about a week there before returning to Earth and touching down at Starliner’s primary landing site in New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range.

While NASA astronauts have for years been flying aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, the agency does not want to rely on a single company, said Makena Young, a fellow with the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

“Having that second option is really important because it adds redundancy and resiliency,” Young said. “In space systems, there are always redundancies, because if something goes wrong, you want to make sure that you have backups.”

Boeing’s journey to this first crewed flight has been turbulent. In 2019, the Starliner’s uncrewed debut was cut short after software glitches prevented the capsule from attempting to dock at the space station. Subsequent fuel valve issues caused several delays before Boeing was able to successfully demonstrate in 2022 that the Starliner could dock at the ISS and return to Earth.

Earlier this year, Boeing’s aviation arm came under fire after a panel blew out midflight on one of its 737 Max 9 airplanes . That major mishap increased scrutiny of the entire company, and it likely raised the stakes for the upcoming Starliner flight, Young said.

“Having a successful launch will be an incredibly important reminder of [Boeing’s] capabilities,” she said. “They’ll be able to show that they are a reliable operator who is able to complete difficult missions and can continue to innovate.”

Young added that the challenges Boeing faced in getting the Starliner to this point show just how tough human spaceflight can be.

“I think that we forget because we’ve done it now for decades, but space is still a very difficult environment,” she said. “It’s actually very difficult to successfully get off the ground.”

Williams said she and Wilmore have confidence in the Starliner program and their mission ahead.

“We feel very safe and very comfortable when this spacecraft flies,” Williams told reporters earlier this week. “This is where we’re supposed to be.”

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

The US spent so much time fighting insurgents that it forgot 'what it means to actually fight a war,' a US vet in Ukraine says

• An American veteran who fought in Ukraine said the US "kind of forgot what it means to actually fight a war."
• He said US training has long been heavily focused on fighting insurgents in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
• He said his own training wouldn't have prepared him for a war like Ukraine.

An American veteran who fought in Ukraine said the US military spent so long focused on fighting insurgents that it forgot "what it means to actually fight a war."

"We have neglected a lot of the training" on "how to fight and survive in a peer-on-peer adversary war," the veteran, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Business Insider.

He said that "in the US military, we mostly have been focusing on a guerilla war" and battling insurgents, with places with Iraq and Afghanistan in mind. The US military invested decades, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives into fights in these places.

The former soldier spoke about how his training with the US military a number of years ago compared to what he saw in Ukraine, where he started fighting when Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022 and left last December.

He said he fought in Iraq as a contractor after leaving the US military, and in Ukraine, he fought in hotspots like Kharkiv and Bakhmut . He served as his unit's combat medic, treating comrades when they were injured in the fight.

"We've gotten so used to the idea of just fighting guerilla wars and fucking fighting terrorists and everything else that we kind of forgot what it means to actually fight a war," he said.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were real wars that came at a severe cost in human lives, but the war in Ukraine is industrial warfare at levels of destruction like the world has not seen in a long time.

With the focus on the wars in the Middle East during much of this century, the US and some of its NATO allies in Europe allowed the skills needed for this kind of conflict to atrophy.

The veteran said that when he went through training, he never got any real training for peer-on-peer conflict. "A little bit of talking about it and just a little bit of training, but nothing to the point that would have prepared me for the war in Ukraine," he recalled.

He said that he has seen a lot of Western soldiers struggle in Ukraine as "they already have a set idea about how things should be and everything, and it's just not that way out in Ukraine."

He said that US soldiers are used to fighting at an equipment and manpower advantage, but against Russia in Ukraine, "a lot of time I've fought at a disadvantage compared to the enemy."

In the US military, he explained, "I believe that a lot of the training that we have is tailored more to fighting in a guerilla warfare nowadays than it is to actually fighting a near-peer adversary like it would be with Russia or China." He said that it is an issue that many NATO members face.

Another American veteran in Ukraine told BI this month that he had similar concerns. He said that his friends still in the US Army ask him for tips on how to fight with drones or in trenches, as they aren't getting training that fully reflects what is happening in Ukraine.

Questions about Western training

Multiple NATO countries have trained Ukrainian soldiers , but the veteran said that some of the Ukrainians he fights with described some of that training as irrelevant or inadequate.

The veteran said that some Ukrainian soldiers who were trained in the UK told him that when they asked how to get through Russia's vast minefields, they were told to just go around them.

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But the problem is that Ukraine says that some of Russia's minefields stretch for miles, making such a strategy all but impossible. Furthermore, open areas that are not mined may already be targeted by artillery or other battlefield threats.

He described some of the training that Ukrainians have gotten as making sense on paper, but it "doesn't work [in Ukraine] because it's not the same type of warfare."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has repeatedly led to questions about Western training. Some Ukrainian soldiers trained abroad said the training they received was not suited to the kind of fighting needed for this war.

A Ukrainian commander who was trained by US, British, and Polish soldiers said last year that if he had followed those countries' advice exactly, he would have been killed.

Many Ukrainian units used NATO training and tactics when Ukraine launched its counteroffensive last summer, but some of the approaches, such as an overemphasis on maneuver warfare without air support in the face of dense minefields and other daunting barriers, ultimately failed. The Ukrainians then changed their tactics after experiencing serious losses in a switch praised by some war analysts , but it wasn't enough.

Another US Army veteran who has been fighting and training soldiers in Ukraine told BI last year that Ukraine's forces would have been worse off if they had followed US battlefield doctrine.

He said the Ukrainians were actually better at understanding some aspects of modern fighting than the US, though they have also made costly mistakes at times in their execution, but such can be the nature of any war.

A different type of war

The veteran said that a lot of foreign fighters have come to Ukraine expecting the same advantages they have had in previous conflicts and that many have been killed as a result of having the "wrong mindset."

Other US veterans who have fought in Ukraine said they found the fighting there far worse than in Afghanistan and Iraq , describing Ukraine as being at a disadvantage the US never was and recalling ceaseless attacks by Russia.

One previously told Business Insider that the relentless fighting in Ukraine often means that, unlike in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no break or chance to relax. It's a kind of fighting that takes a severe toll, both mentally and physically, on a soldier.

He said that in many places where he fought in Ukraine, "there is nowhere that is safe," while when he was in Afghanistan and Iraq, if you were half a mile behind the front line, "you could stand outside and have a barbecue, a sandwich, and drink."

Ukraine is fighting in conditions very different from what the US and its NATO allies have fought through in recent decades. And while there is renewed interest in readying for a near-peer or even peer-level fight against an adversary like China or Russia, rebuilding the skills for great power conflict isn't something that happens overnight.

Lessons from the Cold War and World Wars have to be relearned, and some modern developments demand learning new ways of war from scratch.

The war has often devolved into a grinding fight that features trench warfare and both sides relying on decades-old equipment.

Many soldiers have described the war in Ukraine as resembling World War I and II more than any modern conflict, though there are also modern elements like drones and missiles.

It's a comparison the veteran made, too. He said that fighting to clear Russian trenches made him feel like he was "fighting World War I." The overwhelming role of artillery speaks to that as well.

Ukraine has largely been praised for its ability to fight back against Russia, which has a much larger military, and many experts say Ukraine has a lot it can teach the West about fighting Russia.

The veteran said that "I believe that the Ukrainians could teach some things to the Western militaries, to NATO, just because we haven't fought a conventional war in fucking forever."

Watch: What's next for the war in Ukraine?

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How much pandemic relief money is left for schools: Today's top stories | Daily Briefing

Hi! I'm Madeline Mitchell , The Enquirer's education reporter.

Last year, I earned my Certificate in Education Finance from the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University (thanks to a scholarship and encouragement from my editors here at The Enquirer). This program has a wide variety of resources for journalists and anyone else who wants to dig into school funding data, including information about pandemic relief dollars .

So, what's happened to the $745 million the federal government awarded to public schools in southwest Ohio over the last three years? The majority of districts have spent 90% or more of these funds already.

But some still have millions at their disposal. If they don't spend this money by the end of September, they could lose it altogether .

Where does your family's school district fall? Find out in my latest story, here .

What else you need to know Tuesday, May 7

🌩️ Weather: High of 81 . Cloudy, warm and humid; a couple of showers and a heavy thunderstorm in the afternoon.

🍽️ 13 places serving Mother's Day brunch in Greater Cincinnati this year.

⚾  Reds reliever Sam Moll optioned to Louisville; Frankie Montas to be activated .

🥃 What to know about Woodford Reserve and its exclusive $15,000 Derby 150 Baccarat Edition bottle .

🗳️ Vote: Cincinnati Enquirer Student of the Week ballot , May 6.

Before you go: This one's for the pigs

Relive the Flying Pig Marathon weekend with our favorite photos from one of Cincinnati's clearest indicators that summer is, indeed, on the horizon.

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Brooklyn Beckham Hits 2024 Met Gala Red Carpet Without Wife Nicola Peltz: Here's Why

Brooklyn Beckham said he was "missing my beautiful wife tonight as my date"

Erin Clack is a Staff Editor for PEOPLE. She has been writing about fashion, parenting and pop culture for more than 15 years.

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty

Brooklyn Beckham was thinking about wife Nicola Peltz Beckham as he attended the 2024 Met Gala solo.

At the annual fashion gala in New York City on May 6, Brooklyn, 25, attended without Nicola, 29, as she continues to spend quality time with her grandmother.

On his Instagram Stories right before hitting the red carpet, Brooklyn wrote, "missing my beautiful wife tonight as my date :( but happy she's with naunni x can't wait to see you both tomorrow baby."

Nicola reshared his post on her own Instagram Stories and added, "i love you baby you look so handsome." The star added in another post that she and her grandma had a "cupcake party" while "watching all the beautiful MET dresses together."

The actress recently shared photos on Instagram of her and her grandmother, writing on April 26 that "being with you is literally magic."

"i love being by your side," Nicola wrote. "thank you for choosing me to be your granddaughter i more than love you naunni. our time together is so precious to me. thank you for teaching me how to love others so deeply and fiercely. there isn’t a moment next to you i take for granted. your laugh is the best sound in the world and i want to hear it for the rest of my life."

The dress code for this year's star-studded event is "The Garden of Time." The accompanying Costume Institute exhibit, titled "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion," showcases approximately 250 items spanning more than 400 years of fashion history — from an 1877 Charles Frederick Worth ballgown to modern-day pieces from the likes of Phillip Lim and Stella McCartney .

Nicola took Brooklyn to his very first Met Gala in 2021, nearly a year after they announced their engagement. The model and actress wore a bright pink Valentino gown and pale pink opera gloves, while Brooklyn — who is the oldest son of Victoria and David Beckham — opted for a classic black tux.

Only weeks after their lavish Palm Beach, Fla., wedding , the pair stepped out together to the 2022 Met Gala , both in Valentino looks. Nicola once again chose a vibrant pink gown, featuring cape-style sleeves and a plunging neckline, and paired it with vampy platform shoes.

Brooklyn wore a cream suit with a sheer, open-collared shirt and white sneakers. He told Vogue at the time that he wanted to push the envelope for fashion's biggest night.

"Usually, I just go very simple and wear black suits, but this year, I wanted to add a little bit more," he said. "When I saw that sheer shirt for the first time, though, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, can I pull this off?' But it was so comfortable."

"It's definitely one of my favorite outfits I've ever worn," he added.

At the 2023 gala, the couple channeled the theme of "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty" by wearing the late French designer's signature colors, black and white. They once again went with Valentino — a white strapless ruched gown with a black bow at the waist for Nicola, and an all-black suit and a sheer shirt for Brooklyn. They both accessorized with a collection of statement necklaces.

Though the two always appear perfectly in sync when it comes to their style, Nicola told PEOPLE last month that the couple's fashion tastes are often at odds . "I feel like Brooklyn's favorite is a white T-shirt and jeans," Nicola said of her husband's preference for more casual looks.

Nicola said there will be times when she'll get all dolled up for a party or an event, only to discover that Brooklyn had a decidedly different idea about the dress code for the evening.

"And then he comes out of the closet and I'm like, 'Well, you're sweatshirt vibes tonight. I did not get the memo, but we're too late now, we have to leave,' " she joked of their mismatched looks.

While Brooklyn may not share his wife's passion for fashion, his mother certainly does. Nicola has spoken in the past about how she and mother-in-law Victoria Beckham bond over style, and she recently told PEOPLE she can't help but covet the designer's enviable wardrobe .

"Anytime I get in that closet I'm like, 'Please!' " she said. "It's like heaven in there."

See all of PEOPLE’s Star-Studded Met Gala Coverage in One Place!

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