Abstract
In this paper, we use five decades of time-use surveys to document
trends in the allocation of time. We find that a dramatic increase
in leisure time lies behind the relatively stable number of market
hours worked (per working-age adult) between 1965 and 2003. Specifically,
we show that leisure for men increased by 6 8 hours per week (driven
by a decline in market work hours) and for women by 4-8 hours per
week (driven by a decline in home production work hours). This increase
in leisure corresponds to roughly an additional 5 to 10 weeks of
vacation per year, assuming a 40-hour work week. Alternatively,
the consumption equivalent of the increase in leisure
is valued at 8 to 9 percent of total 2003 U.S. consumption expenditures.
We also find that
leisure increased during the last 40 years for a number of sub-samples
of the population, with less educated adults experiencing the largest
increases. 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.
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