Work and Leisure

The economics of work and leisure 89most prominent economic researcher into time allocation, reports evidencefrom the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to indicate that those withthe highest monthly income have clearly the longest working hours. He estimatesthat for men on average, excluding those who are unemployed, thehighest paid 20 per cent of the workforce work ten hours longer per weekthan do the lowest paid. As he points out: ‘Those with the highest earningsnow have the least time to spend them’ (Table 5.1).Gershuny (1996) suggests the reasons for this pattern:More of the top jobs in the economy require high levels of specific technicalknowledge, which, combined with increasing levels of education,intensifies competition for advantageous positions that were once lessmeritocratically allocated. The freeing of women from the imperatives ofthe reproductive cycle allows them also to compete for these top jobs.And one of the main mechanisms in this competition for top jobs seemsto be to work long hours. Add to this increased competitive pressurefrom government deregulation of industries, and underfunding of servicesleading to overwork of senior staff, and the punishingly long hoursof the top jobs are quite unsurprising.And of course, going along with the economic pressures, are powerfulsocial influences. Just as, at the beginning of the twentieth century, thefact that the richest and most socially prominent were also the mostleisured, gave social cachet to leisure itself, so that in turn all the classesstrove to achieve leisure. By the end of the same century, in Britain andAmerica at least, the richest and most powerful groups now have the leastleisure – and busy-ness acquires its own cachet, long hours of workdenote superior social status.(Gershuny 1996: 4–5)The Institute for Employment Studies (Kodz et al. 1999) reported that one infour UK employees regularly worked more than 48 hours a week, exceedingTable 5.1 Weekly paid work hours by income, UK, 1994–5Work hours per weekGross monthly income quintiles Women MenLowest 18 22Second 35 42Third 40 46Fourth 43 48Highest 47 50Whole sample 33 45Source: British Household Panel Survey (Gershuny 1996)