3.17
The Theory of the Leisure Class
An economic mystery: Why do the poor seem to have more free time than the rich?
By Steven E. Landsburg
As you\'ve probably heard, there\'s been an explosion of inequality in the United States over the past four decades. The gap between high-skilled and low-skilled workers is bigger than ever before, and it continues to grow.
How can we close the gap? Well, I suppose we could round up a bunch of assembly-line workers and force them to mow the lawns of corporate vice presidents. Because the gap I\'m talking about is the gap in leisure time, and it\'s the least educated who are pulling ahead.
In 1965, leisure was pretty much equally distributed across classes. People of the same age, sex, and family size tended to have about the same amount of leisure, regardless of their socioeconomic status. But since then, two things have happened. First, leisure (like income) has increased dramatically across the board. Second, though everyone\'s a winner, the biggest winners are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
To quantify those changes, you\'ve got to decide exactly what leisure means. You can start by deciding what it\'s not. Surely working at your desk or on the assembly line is not leisure. Neither is cleaning or ironing. But what about standing around the water cooler, riding the train to work, gardening, pet care, or tinkering with your car? What about playing board games with your children?
Those are judgment calls, but it turns out not to matter very much what calls you make. When professors Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst combined the results of several large surveys (including studies where randomly chosen subjects kept detailed time diaries), they found that by any definition, the trends are clear.
In 1965, the average man spent 42 hours a week working at the office or the factory; throw in coffee breaks, lunch breaks, and commuting time, and you\'re up to 51 hours. Today, instead of spending 42 and 51 hours, he spends 36 and 40. What\'s he doing with all that extra time? He spends a little on shopping, a little on housework, and a lot on watching TV, reading the newspaper, going to parties, relaxing, going to bars, playing golf, surfing the Web, visiting friends, and having sex. Overall, depending on exactly what you count, he\'s got an extra six to eight hours a week of leisure—call it the equivalent of nine extra weeks of vacation per year.
For women, time spent on the job is up from 17 hours a week to 24. With breaks and commuting thrown in, it\'s up from 20 hours to 26. But time spent on household chores is down from 35 hours a week to 22, for a net leisure gain of four to six hours. Call it five extra vacation weeks.
A small part of those gains is because of demographic change. The average American is older now and has fewer children, so it\'s not surprising that he or she works less. But even when you compare modern Americans to their 1965 counterparts—people with the same family size, age, and education—the gains are still on the order of 4 to 8 hours a week, or something like seven extra weeks of leisure per year.
But not for everyone. About 10 percent of us are stuck in 1965, leisurewise. At the opposite extreme, 10 percent of us have gained a staggering 14 hours a week or more. (Once again, your gains are measured in comparison to a person who, in 1965, had the same characteristics that you have today.) By and large, the biggest leisure gains have gone precisely to those with the most stagnant incomes—that is, the least skilled and the least educated. And conversely, the smallest leisure gains have been concentrated among the most educated, the same group that\'s had the biggest gains in income.
Aguiar and Hurst can\'t explain fully that rising inequality, just as nobody can explain fully the rising inequality in income. But there are, I think, two important morals here.
First, man does not live by bread alone. Our happiness depends partly on our incomes, but also on the time we spend with our friends, our hobbies, and our favorite TV shows. So, it\'s a good exercise in perspective to remember that by and large, the big winners in the income derby have been the small winners in the leisure derby, and vice versa.
Second, a certain class of pundits and politicians are quick to see any increase in income inequality as a problem that needs fixing—usually through some form of redistributive taxation. Applying the same philosophy to leisure, you could conclude that something must be done to reverse the trends of the past 40 years—say, by rounding up all those folks with extra time on their hands and putting them to (unpaid) work in the kitchens of their \"less fortunate\" neighbors. If you think it\'s OK to redistribute income but repellent to redistribute leisure, you might want to ask yourself what—if anything—is the fundamental difference.
inequality: 不平等
round up: 聚拢
a bunch of = a group of 一群
assembly-line: 装配线；流水线
mow the lawns: 割草坪
pull ahead: 抢在前头
distribute: 分布
regardless of: 不管
socioeconomic status:
社会经济地位
across the board: 全面
quantify: 确定数量
water cooler: 冷却饮水机
tinker with: 摆弄；修理
play board game: 下棋
throw in: 外加
commuting time:
上下班花在路上的时间；通勤时间
equivalent: 相等
household chores: 家务事
demographic: 人口统计学的
counterpart: 极为相似的人或物
on the order of: 大约；接近
leisurewise: 在休闲方面
the opposite extreme: 另一个极端
staggering: 令人吃惊的
by and large: 大体上；基本上
stagnant: 不景气的；死气沉沉的
conversely: 相反地
moral: 寓意
a good exercise in perspective:
正确的判断
derby: 比赛
vice versa: 反之亦然
pundit: 政治评论家
redistributive taxation:
以重新分配为目的的课税政策
reverse: 反转
repellent: 排斥的
fundamental: 基本的
值得记忆的词汇：
inequality: 不平等
pull ahead: 抢在前面；超过；
例如：He would be unable to pull ahead even if he won all of the remaining votes. 即使他赢得了所有剩余的选票，他也不可能胜出。
throw in: 外加；加上
例如：Okay, I\'ll buy your car at the agreed price if you throw in a spare tire and a jack. 好的，如果你加上一个备用轮胎和千斤顶，我就按约定的价格买你的车。
household chores: 家务事
on the order of: 接近；大约；
例如：equipment costing on the order of a million dollars 花费近百万美元的设备
the opposite extreme: 另一个极端
by and large: 大体上；基本上
例如：There were bad days, but it was a pleasant summer, by and large. 虽然有时天气不好，但总的来说还是一个愉快的夏天。
vice versa: 反之亦然 |
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