WHY HASN’T ECONOMIC PROGRESS LOWERED WORK HOURS MORE?

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-212
Author(s):  
Tyler Cowen
Keyword(s):  
Working Hours ◽  
Real Income ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
Relative Status ◽  
Alternative Scenarios ◽  
Material Form

Abstract:Why hasn’t economic progress lowered work hours more? One of Keynes’s most famous essays is his “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” Keynes predicts that within one hundred years — which would bring us to 2030 — most scarcity will have disappeared and most individuals will work no more than fifteen hours a week. My question is a simple one: Why wasn’t Keynes right? Why have working hours remained as long as they have? Why hasn’t progress taken a more leisurely and less material form than what we have observed? Investigating that issue will help us get at the question of just how much progress has occurred. Under one view, Western life has been caught in a kind of rat race, and a lot of the gains of progress are illusory. For instance there is the argument that higher incomes are largely consumed as part of a futile race to win relative status, and living standards aren’t nearly as high as they might appear. Under some alternative scenarios, people haven’t moved to Keynes’s scenario for some good reasons, such as enjoying work more than we might think, or other hypotheses, as I will outline. In that case the observed changes in real income are robust, and measured correctly, or progress may even be greater than income measurements would indicate. I hope that addressing Keynes’s paradox can help us better understand this longstanding debate on the nature of modern progress.

scholarly journals PENDAPATAN PEKERJA WANITA PADA INDUSTRI PENGOLAHAN SKALA BESAR

Populasi ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunawan Wibisono ◽  
Sukamdi Sukamdi
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Important Implication ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Real Income ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Labor Income ◽  
Total Income ◽  
Labor Utilization ◽  
Labor Conflicts ◽  
Force Problem

Labor income is a very important issue in the process of industrialization in developing countries. Most strikes and labor conflicts in the last three years were based on workers' desire to increase income. Regarding the fact that most laborers have poor education one common means of increasing income is by lengthening work hours. The results of this study tend to prove this statement. However, this strategy has only increased total income, not real income. Income per hour does not change, and even decreases. It means that extending working hours has only increased self-exploitation. Inaddition, this result has an important implication on the analysis of labor utilization. Laborers who are fully utilized do notal ways have a higher income than those underemployed. Therefore underemployment by working hours does not represent the real labor force problem.

Generating Prosperity for Working Families in Affluent Countries

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Real Income ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Financial Strain ◽  
Inclusive Growth ◽  
Working Families ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
Analysis Of Performance

This book addresses the central challenge facing rich countries: how to ensure that ordinary working families see their living standards and the prospects for their children improve rather than stagnate over time. It presents the findings from a comprehensive analysis of performance over recent decades across the rich countries of the OECD, in terms of real income growth around and below the middle. It relates this performance to overall economic growth, exploring why these often diverge substantially, and to the different models of capitalism or economic growth embedded in different countries. In-depth comparative and UK-focused analyses also focus on wages and the labour market and on the role of redistribution. Going beyond income, other indicators and aspects of living standards are also incorporated including non-monetary indicators of deprivation and financial strain, wealth and its distribution, and intergenerational mobility. By looking across this broad canvas, the book teases out how ordinary households have fared in recent decades in these critically important respects, and how that should inform the quest for inclusive growth and prosperity.

The promise of a four-day week? A critical appraisal of a management-led initiative

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Delaney ◽  
Catherine Casey
Keyword(s):  
Financial Services ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Business Case ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Services Sector ◽  
Measurement Monitoring ◽  
Critical Scrutiny

PurposeThis article critically investigates a management-led experiment to institute a four-day work week with stated intentions of improving productivity and worker wellbeing. The article analyses the framing and implementation of the reduced work hours (RWH) trial, the responses of employees and the outcomes and implications of the trial. It raises concerns regarding the managerial appropriation of employee aspirations for more autonomy over time and improved work life.Design/methodology/approachWe conducted a qualitative case study of a medium-sized company operating in the financial services sector in New Zealand. Focus groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 45 employees.FindingsOur study finds that the promise of a four-day week attracted employee favour and individualised benefits. However, entrenched managerialist practices of performance measurement, monitoring and productivity pressures were intensified. Pro-social and collective interests evident in labour-led campaigns were absent. We urge greater critical scrutiny into seemingly advantageous “business case” initiatives for reduced work hours.Originality/valueLittle is known about what happens to concern for social and employee interests entailed in reduced working hours initiatives when a management-led initiative is implemented. Indeed, the majority of research focuses on the macro-level rather than interrogating the “black box” of firms. Our inquiry contributes to these debates by asking, how does a management-led RWH initiative affect employees?

scholarly journals Men Lose Life Satisfaction with Fewer Hours in Employment: Mothers Do Not Profit from Longer Employment—Evidence from Eight Panels

2020 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 317-334
Author(s):  
Martin Schröder
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
The United States ◽  
Conflict Theory ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Female Partners ◽  
East And West Germany

Abstract This article uses random and fixed effects regressions with 743,788 observations from panels of East and West Germany, the UK, Australia, South Korea, Russia, Switzerland and the United States. It shows how the life satisfaction of men and especially fathers in these countries increases steeply with paid working hours. In contrast, the life satisfaction of childless women is less related to long working hours, while the life satisfaction of mothers hardly depends on working hours at all. In addition, women and especially mothers are more satisfied with life when their male partners work longer, while the life satisfaction of men hardly depend on their female partners’ work hours. These differences between men and women are starker where gender attitudes are more traditional. They cannot be explained through differences in income, occupations, partner characteristics, period or cohort effects. These results contradict role expansionist theory, which suggests that men and women profit similarly from moderate work hours; they support role conflict theory, which claims that men are most satisfied with longer and women with shorter work hours.

scholarly journals ON A QUESTION OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

2018 ◽  
pp. 54-57
Author(s):  
TEIMURAZ BERIDZE
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Real Income ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Gdp Per Capita ◽  
Educational Standards ◽  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Education Standards ◽  
Investment Level ◽  
Per Capita

Economic development looks at a wider range than GDP per capita. Economic development is concerned with how people are actually affected. It looks at their actual living standards and social conditions. Measures of Economic development will look at: Real income per head – GDP per capita; Levels of literacy and education standards; Levels of healthcare (e.g. number of doctors per 1.000 population); Quality and availability of housing; Levels of environmental standards; Levels of infrastructure (transport, communication); Levels of corruption; Educational standards & labor productivity; Labor mobility; Flow of foreign aid & investment; Level of savings & investment; etc.

The Evolution of Living Standards for Middle and Lower Income Households in OECD Countries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Nolan ◽  
Stefan Thewissen
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Real Income ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
Lower Income ◽  
Working Age ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Rich Countries

This chapter carries out and presents the findings from an in-depth comparative analysis of real income growth around and below the middle of the income distribution across the rich countries of the OECD over recent decades. It examines trends in real incomes for the entire population and for working age households only, and sets the evolution of incomes around the middle in each country against what has been happening lower down and higher up the distribution. This allows the range of experiences across countries in these terms to be captured, providing the base which subsequent chapters seek to probe and get behind.

Arbeitszeitflexibilisierung: Welche Modelle entlasten den Arbeitsmarkt?

2004 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Kleinhenz ◽  
Wolfgang Franz ◽  
Knut Gerlach
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Demand ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Temporary Employment ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Working Time ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Wage Setting ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
Positive Balance

AbstractGerhard Kleinhenz gives an overview on the substantial progress in increasing the flexibility of work in Germany over the last 30 years. He strikes a positive balance: The situation has improved a lot. Never-the-less, reality is still far away from the vision of flexibility Economists have. He promotes increased awareness of its advantages: Relieving the labor market and to mobilise additional employees, which will become important because of demographic transition.Wolfgang Franz calls his article “winds of change - from shorter to longer work hours in Germany. He points out that there is a long lasting debate whether shortening of work hours has positive employment effects. It can be convincingly argued, however, that Germany′s work-sharing experiment failed. But now the dispute has taken quite the opposite direction. Will a longer work week create more jobs? More unpaid working hours will almost certainly increase labor demand but a considerable fraction of this additional labor input will be met by the employers now working longer. Besides this, the current movement towards longer work hours in order to secure jobs call for more flexibility of some institutional regulations dictated by jurisdiction, namely the principle of favourable solutions in the context of industry level bargaining.Knut Gerlach argues that under flexible working time contracts, specifically working time accounts as the most wide-spread and innovative type, workers, works councils and management agree to intertemporal time transfers usually with respect to a period of 12 months. In many firms this agreement is accompanied by guaranteeing implicitly or explicitly a temporary employment stability. He shows that such contracts achieve a greater short-term labor market flexibility and by lowering production costs as well as enhancing the efficiency of work organization they might increase employment in specific circumstances. The draw back, however, is that the stability of employment in conjunction with fixed wages (efficient contracts) might lead to long-term wage hikes and negative employment effects. To garner the employment enhancing impact of working time accounts they have to be supplemented by more flexibility of collective wage contracts, specifically by additional competition between different wage setting regimes.

Inequality and Ordinary Living Standards in OECD Countries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Nolan ◽  
Stefan Thewissen
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Relationship ◽  
Real Income ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
Lower Income ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Recent Commentary ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
Distribution Of Income

This chapter focuses on how the patterns of real income growth or stagnation seen in Chapter 2 are related to changes to inequality in the distribution of income, which has played such a prominent role in recent commentary and debate. It examines how income inequality has evolved over recent decades across the rich countries, both overall and in terms of the share going to the very top of the distribution, and highlights key factors in driving inequality upwards—albeit differentially across countries and time-periods. The ways in which rising inequality may undermine real income growth for middle and lower income households are discussed, and the empirical relationship between inequality and such real income growth over recent decades across the rich countries is analysed. Alongside real income growth or its absence, some other ways of looking at whether ‘the middle’ has been ‘squeezed’ in income terms are also explored.

From Whips to Wages

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennie Jeppesen
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
Dynamic Change ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Work Patterns ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
South Wales ◽  
British Colonies

One might perhaps not expect to find many similarities between labor in Virginia 1660-1750 and in New South Wales 1800-1840. However, there was a crucial unfree white labor stream that fed both British colonies in these two periods: convicts. At first glance, the convicts’ working lives look similar—Virginian convicts were held by a master, often on a plantation, and were working for the master’s profit, while New South Wales convicts were assigned to a master, often on a farm, and worked for the master’s profit. However, this is where the similarities end. The control over the convicts by the New South Wales government meant that there were greater rules and regulations over convict living standards, work hours, usage, and punishment. None of these controls existed for Virginian convicts, who were wholly controlled by their masters. As a result of this difference in control, we see a dynamic change in the method used to motivate effective labor from the convict population. While masters of Virginian convicts relied on coercion and punishment to force work patterns, employers in New South Wales instead relied on incentives and rewards. This chapter explores the impacts on method of control, and how it influenced the shift from coercive-driven labor to incentive-driven labor.

scholarly journals Working hours and health behaviour among nurses at public hospitals

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1104-1111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana da Costa Fernandes ◽  
Luciana Fernandes Portela ◽  
Lucia Rotenberg ◽  
Rosane Harter Griep
Keyword(s):  
Working Hours ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Public Hospitals ◽  
Female Group ◽  
Total Work ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Excessive Consumption ◽  
Health Related Behaviour ◽  
The Impact

OBJECTIVE: to analyse the differences between genders in the description in the professional, domestic and total work hours and assess its association with health-related behaviour among nurses. METHODS: this is a transversal study carried out in 18 different public hospitals in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. The data collection procedure was based on questionnaires. All nurses working with assistance were considered eligible (n=2,279). RESULTS: men and women showed significant differences in relation to working hours. The female group showed longer domestic and total work hours when compared to the group of men. In contrast, the number of hours spent on professional work was higher among men. For the women, both the professional hours and total work hours were often associated with excessive consumption of fried food and also coffee, lack of physical exercise and also the greater occurrence of overweight and obesity. CONCLUSION: both the professional hours and the domestic work hours need to be taken into account in studies about health, self-care and also the care provided within the context of nursing workers, particularly among women. The results add weight to the need for actions for health promotion in this occupational group and the importance of assessing the impact of long working hours on the health of workers.

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