IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/soinre/v113y2013i3p1091-1104.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Americans Less Rushed But No Happier: 1965–2010 Trends in Subjective Time and Happiness

Author

Listed:
  • John Robinson

Abstract

A general societal consensus seems to have emerged that the pace of daily life, at least in the US and other Western countries, is speeding up. However, there seems little empirical evidence to document its presence, let alone its increase. The present article reviews results from two questions on subjective-time pressure that have been asked periodically in US national probability surveys since 1965, and which were repeated in separate 2009 and 2010 surveys. Counter to the popular societal consensus on an increasingly time-pressured society noted above, respondent reports of feelings of being “always rushed” declined by 6–9 points from those reported in 2004. The decline was found both among employed and unemployed respondents, indicating it was not simply a function of higher unemployment. At the same time, feelings of being “very happy” also declined over this period, despite the finding that time-pressured people have consistently reported being less happy. Moreover, more time-pressured people continued to report being less happy in these 2009–2010 surveys, even after controls for marital status, employment and other important predictors of happiness. Somewhat higher correlations with happiness were found for a related subjective-time question on having excess time on one’s hands. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Suggested Citation

  • John Robinson, 2013. "Americans Less Rushed But No Happier: 1965–2010 Trends in Subjective Time and Happiness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 113(3), pages 1091-1104, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:113:y:2013:i:3:p:1091-1104
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-012-0133-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-012-0133-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11205-012-0133-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Robinson & Steven Martin, 2008. "What Do Happy People Do?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 89(3), pages 565-571, December.
    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. John P. Robinson & Steven Martin, 2009. "Of Time and Television," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 625(1), pages 74-86, September.
    2. Mina Jyung & Incheol Choi & Yerin Shim, 2021. "Enjoyment Versus Competence Trade-Off: Happy People Value Enjoyment Over Competence More Than Unhappy People," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(8), pages 3679-3701, December.
    3. Dong, Han & Zhang, Jun & Cirillo, Cinzia, 2019. "Exploring, understanding, and modeling the reciprocal relation between leisure and subjective well-being," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 813-824.
    4. Hilke Brockmann, 2009. "Why Are Middle-Aged People so Depressed?: Evidence from West Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 233, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    5. Janusz Czapiński, 2015. "Individual quality of life and lifestyle," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 9(4), December.
    6. Linghan Zhang & Junyi Zhang, 2018. "Impacts of Leisure and Tourism on the Elderly’s Quality of Life in Intimacy: A Comparative Study in Japan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-17, December.
    7. Ming-Chang Tsai, 2019. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ordinary: The Day-of-the-Week Effect on Mood Across the Globe," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(7), pages 2101-2124, October.
    8. Deniz Bayraktaroglu & Gul Gunaydin & Emre Selcuk & Anthony D. Ong, 2019. "A Daily Diary Investigation of the Link Between Television Watching and Positive Affect," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 1089-1101, April.
    9. Hilke Brockmann, 2010. "Why are Middle-Aged People so Depressed? Evidence from West Germany," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 97(1), pages 23-42, May.
    10. Roger Patulny, 2011. "Social Trust, Social Partner Time and Television Time," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 101(2), pages 289-293, April.
    11. Anita Abramowska-Kmon, 2022. "What Makes People Aged 50+ in Poland Happy? The Role of Lifestyle: Evidence from Panel Data," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(6), pages 3221-3252, December.
    12. John E. Grable & Kimberly Watkins, 2016. "Quantifying the Value of Collecting: Implications for Financial Advisers," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 639-648, December.
    13. Andreja Brajša-Žganec & Marina Merkaš & Iva Šverko, 2011. "Quality of Life and Leisure Activities: How do Leisure Activities Contribute to Subjective Well-Being?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 102(1), pages 81-91, May.
    14. Honghao Zhang & Huiyuan Jia & Xin Zhang, 2022. "Dance to Prosper: Benefits of Chinese Square Dance in QOL and the Moderating Roles of Aging Stereotypes," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(24), pages 1-17, December.

    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:spr:soinre:v:113:y:2013:i:3:p:1091-1104. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.