PDF – Journal link – Online appendix – Data
Aguiar, Mark and Erik Hurst (2007): “Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(3): 969-1006.
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 6-9 hours per week (driven by a decline in market work hours) and for women by roughly 4-8 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.
BibTeX Cite:
@article {AguiarHurst2007,
title = {Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades},
journal = {Quarterly Journal of Economics},
volume = {122},
number = {3},
year = {2007},
pages = {969-1006},
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 6-9 hours per week (driven by a decline in market work hours) and for women by roughly 4-8 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.},
author = {Aguiar, Mark and Erik Hurst},
url={https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.122.3.969}
}