Work and Leisure

124 Jiri Zuzanekthe association between time pressure and psychological stress? Fifth, whatare the effects of time pressure and psychological stress on health? Sixth, howcan the negative effects of time pressure and stress on health be countered?The chapter draws particularly on analyses of time-use and population healthdata collected by Statistics Canada (see Table 7.1) but also on findings fromother countries reported in the literature. In the concluding section, anattempt is made to summarise the findings and draw some research andpolicy conclusions.More work – less leisure? Historical views on trendsin work and leisure timeAccording to Lundberg, Komarovsky and McInerny, authors of the benchmark1930s publication Leisure: A Suburban Study (1934: 4), leisure time hadbeen increasing since the end of the nineteenth century and seemed ‘destinedto an even more rapid increase in the near future’. Thirty years later, simply onthe basis of extrapolated trends of the time, Fourastié (1965) predicted that,by 1985, people in most industrial societies would work only one-third of theirlife, the length of the working week would not exceed 30 hours, and 12 weeksof vacation would be guaranteed. Similarly, in the United States, in the mid-1960s, the National Commission on Technology, Automation and EconomicProgress predicted that, by 1985, the working week would decline to 22 hoursor paid vacations would extend to 25 weeks (quoted in Kraus 1971: 464).In the 1970s, however, the mood with regard to the future of work andleisure turned more sombre. Linder (1970) observed that people in modernsocieties led increasingly hectic rather than more leisurely lives. Twenty yearsTable 7.1 Time-use and population health surveys, Canada, 1981–90SurveyYearconductedTimeconductedSamplesizeAgerangeAreasampledNational Time Use PilotSurveyGeneral Social Survey –Time-use (GSS)General Social Survey –Time-use (GSS)General Social Survey –Time-use (GSS)National Population HealthSurvey (NPHS)US National HealthInterview Survey (NHIS)1981 Sept.–Oct. 2,685 15+ 14 urbanareas1986 Nov.–Dec. 9,946 15+ Nationwide1992 All year 9,815 15+ Nationwide1998 All year 10,748 15+ Nationwide1994–5 17,626 12+ Nationwide1990 31,868 19+ USA