Routine

Hamermesh, Daniel

Routine

No 9440, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Routine - maintaining the same schedule from day to day - saves time. It is also boring and inherently undesirable. As such, the amount of routine a person engages in is partly an economic outcome, with variations in routine generated by variations in the price of time, household income and the ability to generate variety. Using time-budget data from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, I show that men engage in more routine behavior than women, but only because they spend more time in (routine) market work. Other things equal, more educated people engage in less routine behavior, while higher household incomes enable people to purchase more temporal variety. Spouses' temporal routines are highly complementary. The positive income effects and impacts of schooling indicate yet another avenue by which standard measures of inequality understate total economic inequality.

JEL-codes: J12 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ltv
Note: LS
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Published as "Routine" Hamermesh, Daniel S.; European Economic Review, January 2005, v. 49, iss. 1, pp. 29-53

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Related works:
Journal Article: Routine (2005)
Chapter: Routine (2004)
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