The Distribution of Leisure Time Across Countries and Over Time

Monika Engler () and Stefan Staubli

University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2008 from Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen

Abstract: In this paper, we use time-use surveys to examine trends in the allocation of time in five industrialized countries over the last thirty years. Adjusting for changing demographics, we find that leisure time across countries has converged over this period. Specifically, leisure time has declined five to eight hours in countries with high leisure levels thirty years ago and has increased around one hour in the other countries. For men the reduction in leisure was driven by an increase in nonmarket work, while women dramatically increased time allocated to market work and decreased nonmarket work time. Lastly, we show that like in the USA leisure inequality increased in all countries of our sample.

Keywords: Time Use; Leisure Inequality; Cross-Country Comparison; MTUS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:dp2008:2008-14

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