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.
1500
1900
2300
2700
(Maddison’s data)
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
1980
2000
Annual Hours Worked in Business
1000
1200
1400
1600
(Divided by Civilian Non-Institutional Population Ages 16+)
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
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 ct and leisure lt to maximize:

E 0   t U (c t , l t ) N t
where Nt is total population
t 0
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
c1 = per capita consumption by children,
c2 = per capita consumption by adults
h1 = per capita hours worked by children,
h2 = per capita hours worked by adults
θ = fraction of population that is children
U  ln[  cmaximizes:
The representative household
1  (1   )c2 ]   ln[ T   h1  (1   )h2 ]
w1 h1  w2 (1   ) h2 subject
 c1 to:
(1   ) c2
and h1, h2, c1, c2  0.
T
(1   )(1   )
h2toset h1 = 0 and
If w1 < w2, then it is optimal
Increase in the fraction of children leads to an increase in h2, hours per capita of adults.
Thus, adult time use is affected by the presence of dependents with lower productivity.
.2
.25
.3
.35
.4
Population Ages 0-15 as a Fraction of Total Population
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
1980
2000
.04
.06
.08
.1
.12
Population Ages 65+ as a Fraction of Total Population
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
1980
2000
Comprehensive Measures of
Non-Leisure Time

Work for pay (including government)

Commuting time

School Hours

Home Production
U  U (Ct , Lt )
where Lt  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
9.2
9.1
9
8.9
8.8
8.7
8.6
8.5
8.4
8.3
8.2
8.1
8
7.9
7.8
7.7
7.6
7.5
7.4
7.3
7.2
7.1
7
Sex
Play sports
Fishing
Art, music
Bars, lounges
Play with kids, hug and kiss
Talk/read to kids
Sleep, church, attend movies
Read, walk
Work break, meals out, visit
Talk with family
Lunch break
Meal at home, TV, read paper
Knit, sew
Recreational trip
Hobbies
Baby care, exercise, meetings
Gardening
Work, homework help, bathe
6.9
6.8
6.7
6.6
6.5
6.4
6.3
6.2
6.1
6
5.9
5.8
5.7
5.6
5.5
5.4
5.3
5.2
5.1
5
4.9
4.8
4.7
4.6
Second job
Cook, work at home, shop
Child care, help adults
Work commute
Dress
Pet care, classes
Errands
Housework
Home repair, grocery shopping
Homework
Pay bills, iron
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?
0
.05
.1
.15
.2
.25
Government Hours as a Fraction of Total Work Hours
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
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
1800
2100
2400
2700
New Estimates of Annual Market Hours Per
Worker
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
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 20th Century
• We assume commute time is 10% of hours worked for entire century
Accounting for Hours Spent in School
School Enrollment Rates
0
25 50 75
100
High School Enrollment Rate for Ages 14-17
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
year
100
130
160
Average Days Attended per Enrolled Student, K-12
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
year
0
20 40 60
Higher Education Enrollment Rate for Ages 18-24
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
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}
300
500
700
900
Annual Per Capita Hours Spent on School for
Ages 5-22
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
1980
2000
.1
.15
.2
.25
.3
.35
Hours Spent in School as a Fraction of Total Market Work
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
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.
30 40 50 60 70
Estimates of Hours of Housework per Week
by Nonemployed Women Ages 18-64
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
housewives
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
0
20
40
60
Estimates of Housework by Employment & Sex Category (ages 18-64)
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
year
nonem ployed wom en
nonem ployed men
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
10 20 30 40 50
0
hours per week
Ages 18-64, by Sex
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
year
fem ales
m ales
20
10
0
hours per week
30
Both Sexes, by Age
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
year
ages 18-64
ages 0-17
ages 65+
2000
Hours Per Capita in Various Activities
Commute Hours (Market and School)
0
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
1980
2000
1920
1940
1960
year
1980
1920
1940
1960
year
1980
2000
Home Production Hours
700 800 900
annual hours
0
1900
1900
1000 1100
School Hours
100 200 300 400
annual hours
100 200 300 400
annual hours
10001100
700 800 900
annual hours
Market Hours
2000
1900
1920
1940
1960
year
1980
2000
600
800
1000
1200
1400
Per Capita Market-Oriented Hours
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
y ear
market
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
6400 6500
6600 6700 6800
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