Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men

Mark Aguiar, Mark Bils, Kerwin Kofi Charles and Erik Hurst

No 23552, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Younger men, ages 21 to 30, exhibited a larger decline in work hours over the last fifteen years than older men or women. Since 2004, time-use data show that younger men distinctly shifted their leisure to video gaming and other recreational computer activities. We propose a framework to answer whether improved leisure technology played a role in reducing younger men's labor supply. The starting point is a leisure demand system that parallels that often estimated for consumption expenditures. We show that total leisure demand is especially sensitive to innovations in leisure luxuries, that is, activities that display a disproportionate response to changes in total leisure time. We estimate that gaming/recreational computer use is distinctly a leisure luxury for younger men. Moreover, we calculate that innovations to gaming/recreational computing since 2004 explain on the order of half the increase in leisure for younger men, and predict a decline in market hours of 1.5 to 3.0 percent, which is 38 and 79 percent of the differential decline relative to older men.

JEL-codes: D1 E24 J01 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-mac
Note: EFG LS PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (74)

Published as Mark Aguiar & Mark Bils & Kerwin Kofi Charles & Erik Hurst, 2021. "Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men," Journal of Political Economy, vol 129(2), pages 337-382.

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