Labor Supply and Entertainment Innovations: Evidence from the US TV Rollout

George Fenton and Felix Koenig

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 17, issue 4, 1-28

Abstract: We study the impact of entertainment technology on labor supply. Using Social Security work histories and a natural experiment arising from the regulated US rollout of television, we estimate that a station launch reduced the probability of working by around 0.3 percentage points, driven mainly by an increase in older-age-group retirement rates. The results support the hypothesis that television's rise contributed to the midcentury transition of retirement from a necessity to "golden years" of enjoyment. Our findings indicate that entertainment innovations have a less pronounced effect on overall labor supply trends than model calibrations in the previous literature suggest.

JEL-codes: D91 J22 J26 L82 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1257/app.20230377

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