{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":54,"pdf_page":62,"physical_index":62,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d7bc6ef31df6fdea37b2e66c32cd9bd59c9d517df086aa84bc0808c419219739"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Time for Things\n\nSo, over the course of the second half of the twentieth century we see an overall pattern in which productivity increases at a steady rate, while, by comparison, the working week changes very little. As the US economy entered into a period of significant and prolonged growth in productivity, with rapidly increasing real wages, it would seem, rather counterintuitively, that the relative value placed on free time—if we take this to be indicated by the ratio of the reduction in work time to the increase in real hourly wages—declined. However, that impression is based on macrolevel longitudinal trends. Economic historians have also studied the issue of work time and wages from the point of view of individual behavior, by examining how workers vary the amount they work as their hourly income varies, and how that has changed over time. As mentioned in the last chapter, Dora Costa (2000a) has shown that the supply curve of labor among late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century workers was strongly backward bending, meaning that number of hours worked was inversely correlated with hourly wages. Costa notes that her findings agree both with those of other economic historians and with observations made in that period. By the late twentieth century, however, the supply curve was no longer backward sloping. For workers in this later period, work hours do not decrease as hourly wages increase. According to Costa: “Changes in the structure of daily work hours could largely be accounted for by the relative number of daily hours workers were willing to supply. Compared to the 1890s, increases in the hourly wage no longer have a large, negative efect impact on hours worked. In fact, workers are now slightly more willing to increase their hours as their wages rise” (p. 334).24 Costa’s analysis indicates that between the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, a marked change took place in the relationship between wage levels and work time. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the older pattern, in which rising real wages led to a reduction in the number of hours worked, is no longer evident. By the 1970s, the relationship between wages and hours had become extremely weak, and by the late twentieth century, it had disappeared altogether—increasing hourly wages no longer afected the demand for free time.\n\nCosta’s findings are open to diferent interpretations. One possible explanation for them, suggested by Costa herself, is that since people typically worked many more hours in the late nineteenth century than in the late twentieth century, the relative value of free time for them would have been higher, and therefore they would have been inclined to use increases in wage rates to reduce time at work. However, wages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were low enough, in many cases barely afording subsistence, to cast some doubt on that explanation. Insofar as levels of absolute poverty and want were significantly higher in the late nineteenth century than in the later twentieth century, it is reasonable to expect to find a stronger preference for increased income, as opposed to more leisure, in the earlier than in the later period. Moreover, in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, there was not much in the way of a welfare state. In the absence of a safety net, there would be a strong incentive to use increases in hourly wages to generate savings rather than to reduce work time.\n\n54","previous_page":53,"next_page":55}