Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 122 No. 3 2007
Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades
Abstract
In this paper, we use five decades of time-use surveys to document trends in the allocation of time within the United States. We find that a dramatic increase in leisure time lies behind the relatively stable number of market hours worked between 1965 and 2003. Specifically, using a variety of definitions for leisure, we show that leisure for men increased by roughly six to nine hours per week (driven by a decline in market work hours) and for women by roughly four to eight hours per week (driven by a decline in home production work hours). Lastly, we document a growing inequality in leisure that is the mirror image of the growing inequality of wages and expenditures, making welfare calculation based solely on the latter series incomplete.
- DOI
- 10.1162/qjec.122.3.969
- Volume
- 122
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 969-1006
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref