TY - JOUR
T1 - Measuring trends in leisure
T2 - The allocation of time over five decades
AU - Aguiar, Mark
AU - Hurst, Erik
N1 - Funding Information:
* We would like to thank Lawrence Katz and four anonymous referees for detailed, helpful comments. We also thank Susanto Basu, Gary Becker, Kathy Bradbury, Kerwin Charles, Raj Chetty, Steve Davis, Jordi Galí, Reuben Gronau, Dan Hamermesh, Chad Jones, Ellen McGratten, Bruce Meyer, Kevin Murphy, Derek Neal, Valerie Ramey, Richard Rogerson, Frank Stafford, Jay Stewart, Justin Wolfers, and seminar participants at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, the Cleveland Federal Reserve (NBER EFG/RSW meeting), the University of Rochester, the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Poverty Research Summer Institute, NBER Summer Institute in Labor Studies, the University of California at San Diego, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Boston College, Harvard, Wharton, and the University of Maryland. We thank Dan Reichgott for research assistance. Hurst would like to acknowledge the financial support of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. This paper was written while Aguiar was employed at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston or the Federal Reserve System.
PY - 2007/8
Y1 - 2007/8
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.1162/qjec.122.3.969
DO - 10.1162/qjec.122.3.969
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:34547657620
SN - 0033-5533
VL - 122
SP - 969
EP - 1006
JO - Quarterly Journal of Economics
JF - Quarterly Journal of Economics
IS - 3
ER -