Work and Leisure

104 Chris Gratton and Peter TaylorSo it seems that Europe and Europeans are different. We pay more taxes sothat government can provide a rich and varied leisure lifestyle for its citizens.Our education system gives us the skills to appreciate and enjoy culture andleisure. And we work less so that we have the time to enjoy our leisure. As aresult, by American standards, we have a leisurely lifestyle that delivers agood quality of life.ConclusionIt was thought by many experts, including economists, that at the beginningof the twenty-first century we would be faced by a problem of having toomuch leisure time. However, for some countries in the world, most notably theUnited States and Britain, most people seem to be faced with decreasingleisure time. This does not, however, indicate that leisure is an inferior goodbecause there is evidence that many would prefer to trade-off some of theirincome for more leisure time. Furthermore, many people would prefer tochange the times at which they work and take leisure.Such evidence casts doubt on the validity in practice of the income/leisuretrade-off model. First, the choices are more complex (work, leisure, unpaidwork, obligated time) and unpaid work and obligated time are not necessarilyconstant. Second, time allocations involve both the individual and theemployer; and the individual’s preferences are often overridden by employerdecisions. Third, there are substantial labour market rigidities which preventa continuity of choice for individual workers – they are faced with imperfectoptions such as working overtime to retain credibility in the workplace; andworking unsocial hours or not at all. Fourth, market work, particularly overtimeworking, is not always compensated directly by an hourly wage rate. Theincome/leisure trade-off model is therefore too unconstrained – it assumestoo much of the labour market.The outcome of the constrained labour market is that many individuals inthe UK, United States and Japan work for longer hours than they wouldideally want, and possibly at times of the day and week that they would prefernot to work. But there are not feasible alternatives to this working arrangementand it is therefore a ‘second best’ solution which people get used to. Itbecomes a cultural and behavioural norm which is difficult to reverse. Bothlabour market rigidities and individual expectations conspire, therefore, toprevent the UK, United States and Japan approaching European norms inwork and leisure time allocations.As we become increasingly affluent, time becomes a more valuable commodity.Yet in the richest societies, time has become increasingly scarce aslong working hours, particularly for those earning most in the labour market,severely constrain the leisure time in which to enjoy this increasing affluence.The end result is the lack of correspondence of standard economic indicators