Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades

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Measuring Trends in Leisure The Allocation of
Time Over Five Decades

• Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst

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Presenters

• Randall Andrews
• Shawn Kinsella
• Cory Sents

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Goals of Paper

• Document the trends in time allocation over the
  38 years between 1965-2003
• Look at Beckers work on family time allocation
  outside of the formal market sector
• Map shifts in time allocation to leisure from
  market work over time
• Explore the affects of various factors in time
  allocation
• Education
• Children
• Wage
• Age
• Family Structure

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Data

• Used data from five major time use surveys
• 1965-1966 Americas Use of Time
• 1975-1976 Time Use in Economics and Social
  Accounts
• 1985 Americas Use of Time
• 1992-1994 National Human Activity Pattern Survey
• 2003 American Time Use Survey
• The demographic composition was held constant
  through all surveys
• Two Main Demographic Sets
• Men and Women
• High School Drop Outs, High School Graduates,
  College Graduates

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Analysis

• The data is broken in to several set and subsets
  for the purpose of analysis in the paper
• Trends in Work
• Market
• Non-Market
• Trends in Total Work
• Aggregate of Market and Non-Market Work
• Trends in Leisure
• From there the roles of demographics, roles of
  contributing factors and leisure inequality is
  explored

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Trends in Work

• Market

• Non-Market

• Time spent on wage earning work
• Working main jobs
• Second jobs
• Overtime
• Decreases for men by 12.1 hours per week
• Increases for women by 3.8 hours per week

• Time spent on non-wage earning, non leisure
  activities
• Cooking
• Cleaning
• Home Care
• Increases for men by 3.8 hours per week
• Decreases for women by 10.3 hours per week

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Work Types Breakdown
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Trends in Total Work

• Aggregates market work and non-market work into
  one category
• Excludes time spent in child care
• For the full sample total work has fallen 8.1
  hours per week
• For men total work has fallen 8.3 hours per week
• For women total work has fallen 7.8 hours per
  week

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Leisure Overall

• Leisure is broken into 4 categories
• Entertainment
• Social Activities
• Relaxing
• Active Recreation
• Increases by 7.4 hours per week on the full
  sample
• Increases by 6.7 hours per week for men
• Increases by 8.0 hours per week for women
• A majority of the increase can be equated to
  television watching
• Increased time spent in leisure amounts to 10.5
  additional weeks of vacation per year

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Leisure Overall
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Changes In Leisure
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Time Spent in Leisure by Activity (Deviation from
1965)
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Trends in Leisure

• The Role of Demographics

• Leisure Inequality

• Two Key Demographics
• Education Attainment
• Gender
• Education Attainment
• ltHigh School or GED
• High School or GED
• lt4 Years of College
• 4 Years of College

• Visible Within and Between Both Key Demographics
• Education
• Gender
• More Unequal Between Educational Groups
• Less Education More Time Spent In Leisure

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Trends in Leisure

• Leisure measure 2 (Social Activities) is the
  focus of trend review.
• While trends in leisure are sloping upward for
  all education attainment groups, the slope is
  greater for groups with less education
• The amount of time spent in Leisure activities is
  also greater for the lower education demographic.
  

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Trends In Leisure (Based on Educational
Attainment)
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Discussion and Conclusion

• People are consuming more leisure in 2003 than
  they were in 1965. This results in less time
  spent performing Market activities.
• The trend over the last 40 years has been
  towards more leisure and less work.
• Women saw a drop in non-market work resulting in
  a rise in market work and leisure.
• Men saw an increase in non-market work, a drop in
  market work and an increase in leisure time.
• Low skill workers are seeing the largest
  increases in time spent in leisure.
• High wages see less increase in consumption of
  leisure.

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Possible Flaws

• Does not account for all of the lost market work
  time or leisure.
• No real market analysis provided for differential
  increase in leisure across income and education
  levels.
• Their definition of leisure includes Child
  Care, seems to be arbitrarily assigned and not
  necessarily a form of leisure.
• The paper provides no analysis of explanations
  for increase in leisure beyond wage disparity.
• Even wage disparity requires assumptions to be
  made about the findings of the paper.

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Thank You

• Any Questions

Work Cited Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst, Measuring
Trends in Leisure The Allocation of Time over
Five Decades, Quarterly Journal of Economic, Aug
2007, 122969-1006