A Century of Work and Leisure

by Valerie A. Ramey and Neville Francis

Has Leisure Increased Over the Last Century?

 Keynes (1930)

Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren

 Lebergott (1993), Greenwood & Vandebroucke (2005): leisure has increased dramatically over the last century  Prescott (1986) and DGE models No secular trends in leisure

Annual Hours Worked Per Worker in the U.S.

(Maddison’s data) 1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

Annual Hours Worked in Business (Divided by Civilian Non-Institutional Population Ages 16+)

1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

New Measures of Leisure Per Capita

 New measure of “per capita” Entire population  Comprehensive measure of non-leisure time - Work-for-pay hours - School hours - Home production hours

How Should We Measure “Per Capita?”

Standard Measure of “Per Capita” •

Civilian non-institutional population

= total non-institutional population ages 16 and over – armed forces.

•

Justification?

Notion of “available workforce”

Why Not Use

Total Population

?

Theoretical Basis:

Standard model with explicit population growth Choose consumption

c t

and leisure

l t

to maximize:

E

0

t

   0 

t U

(

c t

,

l t

)

N t

where N t is total population

Empirical Basis:

The consumption of children is counted in

c

. Why don’t we count their leisure in

l

?

Importance of Accounting for Children Consider a model with perfect substitutability of consumption and leisure of adults and children in household utility.

Let c 1 = per capita consumption by children, c 2 = per capita consumption by adults h 1 = per capita hours worked by children, h 2 = per capita hours worked by adults θ = fraction of population that is children

U

 ln[ 

c

 ( 1   )

c

]   ln[

T

 

h

1  ( 1   )

h

2 ]

w

1 

h

1 

w

2 ( 1   )

h

2  

c

1  ( 1   )

c

2 and

h1, h2, c1, c2

 0.

If w 1 < w 2

h

 ( 1  1 

T

)( 1   ) Increase in the fraction of children leads to an increase in

h 2 ,

hours per capita of adults.

Thus, adult time use is affected by the presence of dependents with lower productivity.

Population Ages 0-15 as a Fraction of Total Population

1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

Population Ages 65+ as a Fraction of Total Population

1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

Comprehensive Measures of Non-Leisure Time

 Work for pay (including government)  Commuting time  School Hours  Home Production

U



U

(

C t

,

L t

)

where L t



T



H mt



H ct



H st



H ht

What is Leisure?

Hawrylshyn (1971) distinguishes leisure from household work by defining household work activities as “those economic services produced in the household and outside the market, but which could be produced by a third person hired on the market without changing the utility to members of the household.”

Ratings of Activity Enjoyment – 1985 (From Robinson and Godbey Appendix O) 9.3 Sex 9.2 Play sports 9.1 Fishing 9 Art, music 8.9 Bars, lounges 8.8

Play with kids , hug and kiss 8.7

8.6 Talk/ read to kids 8.5 Sleep, church, attend movies 8.4

8.3 Read, walk 8.2 Work break, meals out, visit 8.1

8 Talk with family 7.9 Lunch break 7.8 Meal at home, TV, read paper 7.7 Knit, sew 7.6

7.5 Recreational trip 7.4

7.3 Hobbies 7.2

Baby care , exercise, meetings 7.1

7 Gardening Work, homework help , bathe 6.9

6.8

6.7

6.6

6.5

6.4

6.3

6.2

Second job Cook, work at home, shop Child care, help adults Work commute 6.1 Dress 6 Pet care , classes 5.9

Errands 5.8

5.7

5.6

Housework Home repair, grocery shopping 5.5

5.4

5.3

5.2

5.1

Homework Pay bills, iron 5 4.9

4.8

4.7

4.6

Yardwork Clean house, dishes Laundry Child health , doctor, dentist Car repair shop

Accounting for Hours Worked for Pay

The standard RBC measure excludes hours worked in government (civilian and military).

Is that important for trends?

Government Hours as a Fraction of Total Work Hours

1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

Measuring Total Hours

 Includes private hours (establishment, self-employed, unpaid family workers) plus government hours  Use Kendrick data for early period  Use BLS private hours index upweighted by BEA full-time equivalent employment numbers

New Estimates of Annual Market Hours Per Worker

1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

Commuting Time

• Time diary estimates from 1965 – 2003 suggest commute times are a relatively constant 10 % of hours worked.

• Scant evidence early in the century Average commute distances for shorter urban workers, farmers But modes of urban transportation were slower Hours per worker, days per week • Rodrigue (2004) argues time spent commuting for urban workers was relatively constant over 20 th Century • We assume commute time is 10% of hours worked for entire century

Accounting for Hours Spent in School

School Enrollment Rates

High School Enrollment Rate for Ages 14-17 1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000 Average Days Attended per Enrolled Student, K-12 1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000 Higher Education Enrollment Rate for Ages 18-24 1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

Estimating School Hours

Annual school hours = (enrollment in grades K – 8 ) ∙ (avg. days attended by enrollee) ∙ 5.5 hours + (enrollment in grades 9 12 ) ∙ (avg. days attended by enrollee) ∙ 7 hours + {(enrollment in college) ∙ [(fraction full-time) + 0.3 ∙ (fraction part-time)] ∙ 165 days ∙ 8 hours}

Annual Per Capita Hours Spent on School for Ages 5-22

1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

Hours Spent in School as a Fraction of Total Market Work

1900 1920 1940 year 1960 1980 2000

Accounting for Hours Spent in Home Production

Conventional Wisdom

“The diffusion of household utilities and appliances dramatically reduced the hours spent in household chores.”

Estimating Home Production Hours

• We use data from time diaries when possible, since they are considered the most reliable measure of both market work and home production hours •

Strategy:

(i) gather time diary estimates by sex-age-employment status cells (ii) interpolate between years for each cell (iii) weight cell by fraction of population in that cell.

Estimates of Hours of Housework per Week by Nonemployed Women Ages 18-64

1900 1920 1940 1960 year hous ewives 1980 2000 nonem ployed 2020

Are the Early Studies Representative?

     Samples were not nationally representative Urban samples tended to have above average income But most samples were rural, which had less access to electricity, market goods, etc.

Evidence suggests that poor urban households did not do more housework – “being poor meant being dirty”, relied on “bakery bread.” Bryant (1996) adjusts for non-representativeness. Our estimates are consistent with his.

Why Didn’t the Diffusion of Appliances Reduce Housework?

• Appliances replaced low-wage

immigrant

labor • Decline in “

maiden aunts

” % of nonemployed women living in other’s house with no children of own: 18% in 1900, 7.6% in 1960.

• Cross-section and time series studies on appliances: more appliances lead to

more household production output

• Betty Friedan (1963)

The Feminine Mystique

• Mokyr (2000): Revolution in sanitation, germ theory of disease and nutrition theory increased demand for cleanliness just as appliances were diffusing

Estimates of Housework by Employment & Sex Category (ages 18-64)

1900 1920 1940 year 1960 nonem ployed wom en nonem ployed men 1980 2000 em ployed wom en em ployed m en

Children’s Home Production

Estimates from the 1920s are similar to those from the 1980s: Ages 5-14: 3 hours a week Ages 15-17: 5 hours a week

Average Weekly Hours of Housework of Adults

Ages 18-64, by Sex 1900 1920 1940 year 1960 fem ales 1980 m ales Both Sexes, by Age 2000 1900 1920 1940 year 1960 ages 18-64 ages 0-17 1980 ages 65+ 2000

Hours Per Capita in Various Activities

Market Hours Commute Hours (Market and School) 1900 1920 1940 1960 year 1980 2000 School Hours 1900 1920 1940 1960 year 1980 2000 Home Production Hours 1900 1920 1940 1960 year 1980 2000 1900 1920 1940 1960 year 1980 2000

Per Capita Market-Oriented Hours

1900 1920 1940 market y ear 1960 1980 market plus school 2000

Measuring Leisure

 Time endowment is 24 hours per day, 365 days per year  Most personal care time ranks high on enjoyment index (sleeping, eating), so we do not subtract it from leisure  Personal care time is relatively constant at 75 hours per week

Annual Leisure Hours Per Capita

1900 1920 1940 1960 year 1980 2000

Conclusions

 New measures suggest leisure per capita now is about equal to leisure per capita in 1900  Our results are different from the standard ones because we track the leisure of the entire population and we don’t count schooling as leisure.  Keynes prediction has not come true yet for the US