Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/55560 
Year of Publication: 
2006
Series/Report no.: 
Working Papers No. 06-2
Publisher: 
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Boston, MA
Abstract: 
In this paper, we use five decades of time-use surveys to document trends in the allocation of time. We document that a dramatic increase in leisure time lies behind the relatively stable number of market hours worked (per working-age adult) between 1965 and 2003. Specifically, we document that leisure for men increased by 6?8 hours per week (driven by a decline in market work hours) and for women by 4?8 hours per week (driven by a decline in home production work hours). This increase in leisure corresponds to roughly an additional 5 to 10 weeks of vacation per year, assuming a 40-hour work week. We also find that leisure increased during the last 40 years for a number of sub-samples of the population, with less-educated adults experiencing the largest increases. 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.
JEL: 
D12
D13
J22
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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