Working time, inequality, and sustainability

Jared B. Fitzgerald and Juliet Schor

Chapter 19 in Handbook on Inequality and the Environment, 2023, pp 325-344 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Mainstream approaches to sustainable development emphasize technological advancements and decoupling environmental impacts from economic growth as the primary pathways to sustainability. Challenging this view, many scholars emphasize that achieving sustainability requires changing social and economic institutions. One such change that is becoming increasingly popular is reducing working hours. Proponents of working time reduction argue that it has the potential to be a multi-dividend sustainability policy that can improve social, economic, and environmental outcomes. In this chapter we review the literature connecting working time with sustainability with an emphasis on how this relationship is affected by issues of economic inequality. We discuss the arguments for how working hours and inequality are related to environmental harms and consider what empirical research tells us about these relationships. We end the chapter with a discussion on the feasibility of working time reductions, the impacts of COVID-19 and considerations about sustainability and work more broadly.

Keywords: Environment; Geography; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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