IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6419.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Unequal Work Day: A Long-Term View

Author

Listed:
  • Dora L. Costa

Abstract

I investigate how the distribution of daily hours worked among prime-aged men has changed since the 1890s by occupational and industrial group and by the hourly wage. I find that although hours of work have fallen for all workers, the decline was disproportionately large among the lowest paid workers. In the past hours worked were very unevenly distributed with the lowest paid workers working the longest day whereas today it is the highest paid workers who work the longest day. I argue that much of the change in the relative length of the work day can be accounted for by changes in the number of daily hours workers are willing to supply. I show that the unequal distribution of work hours in the past equalized income and that in recent times the unequal distribution of hours worked magnifies income disparities, suggesting that wage or wealth data may underestimate long-run improvements in the welfare of the lowest paid workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Dora L. Costa, 1998. "The Unequal Work Day: A Long-Term View," NBER Working Papers 6419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6419
    Note: DAE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6419.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dora L. Costa, 1997. "Less of a Luxury: The Rise of Recreation since 1888," NBER Working Papers 6054, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Atack, Jeremy & Bateman, Fred, 1992. "How Long Was the Workday in 1880?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(1), pages 129-160, March.
    3. Lundberg, Shelly J, 1985. "Tied Wage-Hours Offers and the Endogeneity of Wages," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(3), pages 405-410, August.
    4. Claudia Goldin & Robert A. Margo, 1992. "The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 1-34.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Haoming Liu & Yi Wen & Lijing Zhu, 2007. "Uniform Working Hours and Structural Unemployment," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 8(1), pages 113-136, May.
    2. Tisdell, Clement A., 2006. "Effects of Markets on Poverty and Economic Inequality: Evolutionary and Ethical Perspectives," Social Economics, Policy and Development Working Papers 123543, University of Queensland, School of Economics.
    3. Lonnie Golden, 2009. "A Brief History of Long Work Time and the Contemporary Sources of Overwork," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 84(2), pages 217-227, January.
    4. Robert A. Margo, 2000. "The History of Wage Inequality in America, 1920 to 1970," Macroeconomics 0004035, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Wen, Yi & Zhu, Lijing & Liu, Haoming, 2001. "Uniform Working Hours: A Culprit of Structural Unemployment," Working Papers 01-20, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    6. Nancy Folbre, 2009. "Time Use and Living Standards," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 93(1), pages 77-83, August.
    7. Pope, Clayne, 2009. "Measuring the distribution of material well-being: U.S. trends," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 66-78, January.
    8. Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 1999. "The Returns to Skill in the United States across the Twentieth Century," NBER Working Papers 7126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Robert A. Margo, 1999. "The History of Wage Inequality in America, 1820 to 1970," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_286, Levy Economics Institute.

    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. Costa, Dora L, 2000. "The Wage and the Length of the Work Day: From the 1890s to 1991," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(1), pages 156-181, January.
    2. Kutuk, Yasin, 2022. "Inequality convergence: A world-systems theory approach," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 150-165.
    3. Frances McGinnity & Emma Calvert, 2008. "Yuppie Kvetch? Work-life Conflict and Social Class in Western Europe," Papers WP239, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    4. Patricia Crifo & Etienne Lehmann, 2001. "Why the Kuznets Curve Will Always Reverse," Post-Print halshs-00150773, HAL.
    5. Leora Friedberg, 2003. "The Impact of Technological Change on Older Workers: Evidence from Data on Computer Use," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(3), pages 511-529, April.
    6. Shinhye Chang & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2018. "Causality Between Per Capita Real GDP and Income Inequality in the U.S.: Evidence from a Wavelet Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 269-289, January.
    7. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.
    8. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2023. "Scientific Background to the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2023-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    9. Attanasio, Orazio & Davis, Steven J, 1996. "Relative Wage Movements and the Distribution of Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1227-1262, December.
    10. Alan Manning & Barbara Petrongolo, 2005. "The Part-Time Pay Penalty," CEP Discussion Papers dp0679, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Richard Blundell & Mike Brewer & Marco Francesconi, 2008. "Job Changes and Hours Changes: Understanding the Path of Labor Supply Adjustment," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(3), pages 421-453, July.
    12. Rosen, Sherwin, 1985. "Implicit Contracts: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 23(3), pages 1144-1175, September.
    13. Joseph G. Altonji & Christina H. Paxson, 1992. "Labor Supply, Hours Constraints, and Job Mobility," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(2), pages 256-278.
    14. Matthew Higgins & Daniel Levy & Andrew T. Young, 2003. "Growth and Convergence across the US: Evidence from County-Level Data," Working Papers 2003-03, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    15. Gregory Kurtzon, 2012. "Ability Composition Effects on the Education Premium," Working Papers 456, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    16. Anna & Leonardo Weller, 2018. "Was Cold War A Constraint To Income Inequality?," Anais do XLIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 44th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 94, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    17. Robert A. Margo, 1993. "Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 41-59, Spring.
    18. Verdugo, Gregory, 2014. "The great compression of the French wage structure, 1969–2008," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 131-144.
    19. Robert A. Margo, 1993. "Explaining Black-White Wage Convergence, 1940-1950: The Role of the Great Compression," NBER Historical Working Papers 0044, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative

    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:6419. 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.