IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11895.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Expanding Workweek? Understanding Trends in Long Work Hours Among U.S. Men, 1979-2004

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Kuhn
  • Fernando Lozano

Abstract

According to Census and CPS data, the share of employed American men regularly working more than 48 hours per week is higher today than it was 25 years ago. Using CPS data from 1979 to 2006, we show that this increase was greatest among highly educated, highly-paid, and older men, was concentrated in the 1980s, and was largely confined to workers paid on a salaried basis. We rule out a number of possible explanations of these changes, including changes in measurement, composition effects, and internet-facilitated work from home. Among salaried men, increases in long work hours were greatest in detailed occupations and industries with larger increases in residual wage inequality and slowly-growing real compensation at 'standard' (40) hours.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Kuhn & Fernando Lozano, 2005. "The Expanding Workweek? Understanding Trends in Long Work Hours Among U.S. Men, 1979-2004," NBER Working Papers 11895, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11895
    Note: LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11895.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brent R. Moulton, 1996. "Bias in the Consumer Price Index: What Is the Evidence?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 159-177, Fall.
    2. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    3. Casey B. Mulligan, 1998. "Microfoundations and macro implications of indivisible labor," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 126, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    4. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M & Pierce, Brooks, 1993. "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 410-442, June.
    5. Michael J. Boskin, 1998. "Consumer Prices, the Consumer Price Index, and the Cost of Living," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 3-26, Winter.
    6. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2002. "12 Million Salaried Workers are Missing," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 55(4), pages 649-666, July.
    7. Rogerson, Richard, 1988. "Indivisible labor, lotteries and equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 3-16, January.
    8. George J. Borjas, 1980. "The Relationship between Wages and Weekly Hours of Work: The Role of Division Bias," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 15(3), pages 409-423.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter Kuhn & Fernando Lozano, 2008. "The Expanding Workweek? Understanding Trends in Long Work Hours among U.S. Men, 1979-2006," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 311-343, April.
    2. Eva Fransen & Janneke Plantenga & Jan Dirk Vlasblom, 2011. "Why do women still earn less than men? Decomposing the Dutch gender pay gap, 1996-2006," Post-Print hal-00719069, HAL.
    3. Monsueto, Sandro Eduardo & Simão, Rosycler Cristal Santos, 2008. "The impact of gender discrimination on poverty in Brazil," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.
    4. Qu, Zhaopeng (Frank) & Zhao, Zhong, 2008. "Urban-Rural Consumption Inequality in China from 1988 to 2002: Evidence from Quantile Regression Decomposition," IZA Discussion Papers 3659, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Victor Chernozhukov & Iván Fernández‐Val & Blaise Melly, 2013. "Inference on Counterfactual Distributions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(6), pages 2205-2268, November.
    6. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Tymon Słoczyński, 2015. "The Oaxaca–Blinder Unexplained Component as a Treatment Effects Estimator," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 77(4), pages 588-604, August.
    8. repec:dgr:rugggd:gd-114 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Atal, Juan Pablo & Ñopo, Hugo R. & Winder, Natalia, 2009. "New Century, Old Disparities: Gender and Ethnic Wage Gaps in Latin America," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 1131, Inter-American Development Bank.
    10. Luis Ayala & Javier Mart n-Rom n & Juan Vicente, 2023. "What Contributes to Rising Inequality in Large Cities?," LIS Working papers 850, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    11. Ferreira, Francisco H. G. & Firpo, Sergio & Messina, Julián, 2017. "Ageing Poorly? Accounting for the Decline in Earnings Inequality in Brazil, 1995-2012," IZA Discussion Papers 10656, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    12. Ferreira , Francisco H. G., 2010. "Distributions in motion: economic growth, inequality, and poverty dynamics," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5424, The World Bank.
    13. Barry Reilly, 1999. "The gender pay gap in Russia during the transition, 1992‐96," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 7(1), pages 245-264, March.
    14. Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza & Luis C. Carvajal-Osorio, 2020. "Two Stories of Wage Dynamics in Latin America: Different Policies, Different Outcomes," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 128-168, June.
    15. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    16. Rycx, François & Saks, Yves & Tojerow, Ilan, 2016. "Misalignment of Productivity and Wages across Regions? Evidence from Belgian Matched Panel Data," IZA Discussion Papers 10336, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Yosr Abid & Cathal O'Donoghue & Denisa Sologon, 2016. "Decomposing Welfare Inequality in Egypt and Tunisia: an Oaxaca-Blinder Based Approach," Working Papers 1015, Economic Research Forum, revised Jun 2016.
    18. Domenico Depalo & Raffaela Giordano & Evangelia Papapetrou, 2015. "Public–private wage differentials in euro-area countries: evidence from quantile decomposition analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 985-1015, November.
    19. Beblo, Miriam & Wolf, Elke, 2003. "Sind es die Erwerbsunterbrechungen? : ein Erklärungsbeitrag zum Lohnunterschied zwischen Frauen und Männern in Deutschland (Is it the employment interruptions? * a contribution to explaining the wage ," Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 36(4), pages 560-572.
    20. René Böheim & Klemens Himpele & Helmut Mahringer & Christine Zulehner, 2011. "The Gender Pay Gap in Austria: Tamensi Movetur!," WIFO Working Papers 394, WIFO.
    21. Miśkiewicz, Janusz, 2010. "Entropy correlation distance method. The Euro introduction effect on the Consumer Price Index," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(8), pages 1677-1687.
    22. Vu, Tien Manh & Yamada, Hiroyuki, 2020. "Convergence of public and private enterprise wages in a transition economy: Evidence from a distributional decomposition in Vietnam, 2002–2014," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 44(1).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11895. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.