Long-run trends in working time and leisure

Over the past century there has been a large decline in average hours worked in what are today's advanced industrialised countries. Two recent papers have looked at the issue. The first, and best known, is the new NBER working paper by Valerie A. Ramey and Neville Francis: A Century of Work and Leisure (free PDF here). The paper found that much of the decline in US working hours has been offset by more in education:

Has leisure increased over the last century? Standard measures of hours worked suggest that it has. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive measure of non-leisure hours that includes market work, home production, commuting and schooling for the last 105 years. We also present empirical and theoretical arguments for a definition of “per capita” that encompasses the entire population.

The new measures reveal a number of interesting 20th Century trends. First, 70 percent of the decline in hours worked has been offset by an increase in hours spent in school. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, average hours spent in home production are actually slightly higher now than they were in the early part of the 20th Century. Finally, leisure per capita is approximately the same now as it was in 1900.

Also worth citing is Working Time over the 20th Century by Alexander Ueberfeldt (Bank of Canada working paper 2006-18). Examining Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, he finds a major decline in the workweek length which in most countries, was not offset by an increase in the number of employed persons. In fact, the employment rate declined in many cases - partly offsetting the effects of the shorter working week. Here is the abstract

From 1870 to 2000, the workweek length of employed persons decreased by 41 per cent in industrialized countries. The employment rate, employment per working age person, displays large movements but no clear secular pattern. This motivated the question: What accounts for the large decrease in the workweek length and developments in the employment rate over the past 130 years?

The answer is given in a dynamic general-equilibrium model with supervisory and production workers. Over time, both types of workers become more productive. In a calibrated version of the model, productivity gains of supervisors account for a large fraction of the decline in the workweek length in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The model, augmented to include taxes, government spending, and technological progress, captures the movement in the employment rates of the three countries.

Comments

[Arthur Eckart]

The link below suggests Americans will be busier than ever:

http://www.wallstreetdigest.com/sample/viewStory.php?id=306&issue_id=25