Spending Time

The author is a distinguished labour economist who has devoted a great deal of study to time as our most valuable resource, based on a wealth of published material, including thousands of time diaries across different nationalities. The phrase cash rich but time poor has become proverbial in relation to the stressful pace of modern life, especially in a corporate setting, and time is an appropriate theme for an economics based on the study of scarcity. By definition, we face constraints and trade-offs in our use of time, with sleeping and working taking up the largest share, followed by watching TV (reading for me). Among the topics studied and illustrated with revealing charts are how much and when we work, differences between men and women (these are narrowing as more women enter the workplace), patterns at different times of life and relating to different levels of wealth.

I was surprised to learn that there is no legal mandate for paid vacations in the US, as there is in other countries, which goes a long way towards explaining why many Americans only take two weeks holiday a year. Girls do more homework and socialising, while boys spend more time on sporting activities and slightly more on TV. Making time for togetherness in couples is significantly correlated with happiness. Overall, 'growth in incomes has far outpaced growth in the time available to us outside work', and better off people tend to feel more rushed unless they have a great deal of domestic help. The author's advice is sound in encouraging us to slow down, exercise, take baths and prevent too much spill-over of work into leisure. We could also trade more time for money, opting for a simpler lifestyle. He adds a number of policy suggestions and while commenting on the welcome development of a small drop in hours spent working in the US he omits to discuss the future implications of automation for employment, which will represent a wider challenge.