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The paper summarizes the state of the art of time budget surveys and analyses. It first treats the new methodological developments, than reviews the different fields of utilization of time budget data: mass media contact, demand for cultural and other leisure goods and services, urban planning, consumer behavior, needs of elderly persons and of children, the sexual division of labor, the informal economy and household economics, social accounting, social indicators, quality of life, way of life, social structure. It deals also with the lessons from intertemporal and international comparisons of the results of time budget surveys.

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Modernisation theory is considered to be the best framework to interpret the socialist period and the collapse of the socialist system. Modernisation is defined here as a combination of five processes: 1. structural changes; 2. an improvement in living standards; 3. the development of a welfare system; 4. democratisation; 5. the development of modern values and norms. During the socialist period, structural changes usually went in the direction of modernisation in that living conditions were improved, albeit more slowly than in the market economies, while the welfare system was dysfunctional. The greatest obstacle to further modernisation was seen to be the absence of values and norms which provide the basis for the functioning of a modern economy and society. The cause of this value crisis was the initially totalitarian and later authoritarian character of the system. The failure of the modernisation process delegitimised the political system, and subsequent popular pressure to change the system was the main cause of its collapse. After the revolution, the political system was wholly democratised, but the former socialist countries are confronted with serious economic decline, which will hopefully be turned around in the coming years. A thoroughgoing reform of social policy is needed but not so easily implemented. The development of the `civic virtues', values and norms needed for an efficient market economy and the functioning of political democracy might take several decades.

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