Americans' Leisure Time

Tim Worstall tackles the issue of Americans having more leisure time than they used to in his usual snarky way. I typically rather enjoy his takedowns of Paul Krugman. Back on topic:

The reason this is happening -- why more paid hours are leading to more leisure hours -- seems to be explained by this paper from Harvard's Richard Freeman. Precisely because women are earning -- and then buying in those services which they used to do unpaid -- we're seeing greater specialization of labor (or if you prefer, more trade). And as we know that's the route to greater productivity. The actual paper itself is looking at American and German women and their participation in paid work. While they don't actually put it quite this way, the fact that many German women stay at home to make sauerkraut, while more American women go outside the home to do something they're good at, buying the food at the supermarket on the way home, means that the American women are both richer and have more leisure time.

Further, the high European unemployment rates can be explained (in part) by this as well:

"The smaller number of service jobs per adult in Germany than in the US shows up in both the least skilled service sectors and in high-tech and high skilled service sectors. The conventional explanation of the US-EU employment gap focuses on the relative dearth of low skilled service sector jobs in the EU because of the consequences on joblessness and social exclusion."

That is, if everyone stays home canning there are no simple jobs in the factories for people to do. So they rot on the scrap heap of unemployment, burning cars for entertainment's sake. This European social model doesn't seem to have all that much going for it so far really, does it?

Still, it could be true that while leisure hours are increasing in the US they are still lower than in Europe. Could be true but it isn't. This paper from Ronald Schettkat of Utrecht University explains it:

"The conventional view is that Americans work longer hours than Germans and other Europeans but when time in household production is included, overall working time is very similar on both sides of the Atlantic. Americans spend more time on market work but German invest more in household production."

The actual numbers show that American men work almost exactly the same hours, paid and unpaid together, as German men do; and German women actually 1.5 hours a week more than their sisters across the pond.

Worstall, since he's English, tends to focus more on European perceptions of America. Similar to the book "Cowboy Capitalism" which I reviewed here.