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Trends in Work-life Balance: Evidence from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS). Jonathan Gershuny Revised 22/5/2008 For Centre for Time Use Research (CTUR) www.timeuse.org. Introduction. Academic motivation Running out of time? Women’s dual burden? A harried leisure class?
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Trends in Work-life Balance: Evidence from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS) Jonathan Gershuny Revised 22/5/2008 For Centre for Time Use Research (CTUR) www.timeuse.org
Introduction • Academic motivation • Running out of time? • Women’s dual burden? • A harried leisure class? • Introduction to the MTUS • Work/life imbalance • Puzzles of the work/leisure triangle • Work gets less gendered • The superordinate working class
> 1 century of leisure growth • Marx 1866: exploitation rate=timedominance • Veblen 1908 “the leisure class” • Dumazadier 1960 “the leisure society” • Linder 1970 “harried leisure class” • Vanek 1974, “counterintuitive technology” • Meissner et al 1975, “dual burden” • Schor 1990 vs Robinson&Godbey 1999 • Esping Andersen 1999, Jacobs&Gerson 2004
Veblen: Theory of the Leisure Class • Leisure as the “badge of honour” • “Conspicuous leisure” denoting superordinate social status. • “imperative…the requirement of abstention from productive work.” (p36) • The principle of emulation: • Each rank of society seeks to emulate the pattern of life of that rank immediately above it in terms of prestige. • Empirical implication: • positive leisure/status gradient
The superordinate working class • The centrality of knowledge in post-industrial society (Daniel Bell 1975) • “knowledge elites” and the “technocracy” • Post-materialism…. or Gordon Gecko? • Economic primacy of human capital • Population ageing hum cap formation as key means of intergenerational status transmission • Income from human capital during working life, from wealth in retirement. • Highest incomes from work not wealth. • work as the new “badge of honour”
Conclusions • Academic issues: • Running out of time? • Women’s dual burden? • A harried leisure class? • Work/life imbalance? • Work gets less gendered • The superordinate working class • Continued puzzles of the work/leisure triangle. • The new release of the MTUS….