明治経営2015 I

Nice work if you can get out

For most of human history, rich people had the most leisure. In "Downton Abbey", a drama about the British upper classes of the early 20th century, one wealthy woman has never heard the word "weekend": for her, every day is filled with leisure. On the other hand, the poor have typically worked hard. Hans-Joachim Voth, an economic historian at the University of Zurich, shows that in 1800 the average English worker laboured for 64 hours a week. "In the 19th century you could tell [        ] poor somebody was by how long they worked," says Mr. Voth.

In today's advanced economies, things are different. Overall working hours have fallen over the past century. But the rich have begun to work longer hours than the poor. In 1965, men with a college degree were richer and had a bit more leisure time than men who had only completed high school. But by 2005 the college-educated worker had eight hours of [         ] it a week than the high-school graduates. Figures from the American Time Use Survey, published last year, show that Americans with a university degree work two hours more each day than those who did not graduate from high-school. Other research shows that the share of college-educated American men regularly working more than 50 hours a week rose from 24% in 1979 to 28% in 2006, but fell for high-school dropouts. The rich, it seems, are no longer the class of leisure.

There are a number of explanations. One has to do with what economists call the "substitution effect". Higher wages make leisure more [       ]: if people take time off they give up more money. Since the 1980s the salaries of those at the top have risen strongly, while those below average are unchanged or have fallen. Thus, rising inequality encourages the rich to work more and the poor to work less.

The "winner-takes-all" nature of modern economies may increase the substitution effect. The scale of the global market means businesses with new ideas tend to make huge profits (think of YouTube, Apple and Goldman Sachs). The rewards for beating your competitors can be enormous. Research from Peter Kuhn of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fernando Lozano of Pomona College shows that the same is true for highly skilled workers. Although they do not immediately get overtime pay for "extra" hours, the most successful workers, often the ones putting in the most hours, may reap gains from winner-takes-all markets. Whereas in the early 1980s a man working 55 hours a week earned 11% more than a man putting in 40 hours in the same type of occupation, that gap had increased to 25% by the turn of the millennium.

より高い賃金が人々により多くの物質的な欲求を満足させることができるようになるにつれて、人々は余分な労働をやめて余暇を選択するようになると経済学者たちは想定していた。A billionaire who can [     ] his own island has little reason to work an extra hour. But the new way of thinking may mean that the opposite is true.

The status of work and leisure in the rich world has changed since the days of "Downton Abbey". In 1899, an American economist called Thorstein Veblen argued that leisure was a "badge of honour". Rich people could get others to do the dirty, repetitive work. Yet, those rich people were not [    ]. In their free time they did challenging and creative activities such as writing, debating and work to help others which they called "exploits".

However, a recent paper by researchers at Oxford University argues that Veblen's theory does not work today. Work in developed countries has become more knowledge-intensive and intellectual. There are fewer really boring jobs, like elevator operator, and more glamorous ones, like fashion designer. Therefore more people can enjoy "exploits" at the office because work now offers the sort of pleasures that rich people used to enjoy in their free time. For this reason, leisure is [     ] a sign of social power. Instead it symbolises uselessness and unemployment.

Research by Arlie Russell Hochschild of the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that as work becomes more complex, people enjoy it more than home life. "I come to work to relax," one interviewee tells Ms Hochschild. And wealthy people often feel that staying at home is a waste of time. A study in 2006 revealed that Americans [     ] a household income of more than $100,000 had 40% less "passive leisure" (such as watching TV) than those earning less than $20,000.

What about less educated workers? Increasing leisure time probably shows that it is more difficult for low-skilled and manual workers to find jobs. In 1965, the unemployment rate of American high-school graduates was 2.9 percentage points higher than for [     ] with a university degree. Today it is 8.4 points higher. "Less educated people are not necessarily buying their way into leisure," explains Erik Hurst of the University of Chicago. Some of that time [     ] work may not be the worker's choice. In addition, high-quality, cheap home entertainment means that low-earners do not need to work as long to enjoy their leisure.