IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uam/wpaper/200806.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Evolution of the Labor Market and Leisure Industries in Spain: Quality of Life versus Standard of Living

Author

Listed:
  • Paramio, Juan Luis

    (Departamento de Educación Física, Deportes y Motricidad Humana. Universidad Autónoma)

  • Zofío, José Luis

    (Departamento de Análisis Económico (Teoría e Historia Económica). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Abstract

We discuss the effects that the emergence of the new post-industrial form of flexible capitalist organization has on the Spanish labor market and, by extension, on the working life of two representative groups of employees characterized by their casual and stable working conditions. This brings a growing duality in the labor market, where individuals who cannot escape casual employment coexist with those enjoying long term contracts. This concern includes how these changes affect the nature and the ways in which these particular groups understand quality of life and standard of living, which in turn serves to call into question the ‘end of work’ and the expected ‘leisure society’. In addition, we highlight several circumstances that illustrate a decay in job quality and working conditions, particularly the increase in working hours. Parallel to this process we identify a work-and-spend behavior, resulting in overspent families that exhibit financial fragility and give up quality of life, associated with more free time, for higher living standards, which demand an increasing job commitment. Free time from work has become a scarce resource in Spain, and for those individuals belonging to what is known as the ‘new leisure class’, it is associated with high spending leisure activities, which has increased the economic importance of leisure industries.

Suggested Citation

  • Paramio, Juan Luis & Zofío, José Luis, 2008. "The Evolution of the Labor Market and Leisure Industries in Spain: Quality of Life versus Standard of Living," Working Papers in Economic Theory 2008/06, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History).
    • Handle: RePEc:uam:wpaper:200806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uam.es/departamentos/economicas/analecon/especifica/mimeo/wp20086.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thorstein Veblen, 1899. "Mr. Cummings's Strictures on "The Theory of the Leisure Class"," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(1), pages 106-106.
    2. Robert W. Fogel, 1999. "Catching Up with the Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 1-21, March.
    3. Mark L. Bryan, 2007. "Free to choose? Differences in the hours determination of constrained and unconstrained workers," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(2), pages 226-252, April.
    4. Veblen, Thorstein, 1899. "The Theory of the Leisure Class," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number veblen1899.
    5. Jerry Jacobs & Kathleen Green, 1998. "Who Are the Overworked Americans?," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(4), pages 442-459.
    6. Martin Upchurch, 2004. "Globalization and its Effects on Labour," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 18(4), pages 819-822, December.
    7. Cathleen Whiting, 2004. "Income Inequality, the Income Cost of Housing, and the Myth of Market Efficiency," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 851-879, October.
    8. Jonathan Michie & Christine Oughton & Frank Wilkinson, 2002. "Against the New Economic Imperialism: Some Reflections," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 351-365, January.
    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. Ian Dew-Becker & Robert J. Gordon, 2008. "The Role of Labor Market Changes in the Slowdown of European Productivity Growth," NBER Working Papers 13840, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Mattauch, Linus & Hepburn, Cameron & Stern, Nicholas, 2018. "Pigou pushes preferences: decarbonisation and endogenous values," INET Oxford Working Papers 2018-16, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    2. Andreia Tolciu, 2010. "The Economics of Social Interactions: An Interdisciplinary Ground for Social Scientists?," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 223-242, January.
    3. Pak, Tae-Young, 2023. "Relative deprivation and financial risk taking✰," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PA).
    4. Ostovan, Nima & Khalili Nasr, Arash, 2022. "The manifestation of luxury value dimensions in brand engagement in self-concept," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    5. Tiia-Lotta Pekkanen, 2021. "Institutions and Agency in the Sustainability of Day-to-Day Consumption Practices: An Institutional Ethnographic Study," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 168(2), pages 241-260, January.
    6. BARTOLINI Stefano & SARRACINO Francesco, 2011. "Happy for How Long? How Social Capital and GDP relate to Happiness over Time," LISER Working Paper Series 2011-60, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    7. Dieter Bögenhold, 2008. "Economics, Sociology, History: Notes on Their Loss of Unity, Their Need for Re-integration and the Current Relevance of the Controversy between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 85-101, January.
    8. Po‐Ting Liu & Guang‐Zhen Sun, 2005. "The International Demonstration Effect And The Domestic Division Of Labour: A Simple Model," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(4), pages 515-528, December.
    9. Welsch, Heinz & Kühling, Jan, 2015. "Income comparison, income formation, and subjective well-being: New evidence on envy versus signaling," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 21-31.
    10. Aronsson, Thomas & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2014. "Positional preferences in time and space: Optimal income taxation with dynamic social comparisons," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 1-23.
    11. Anastassios D. Karayiannis & Allan E. Young, 2003. "Entrepreneurial Activities in a Veblenian Type Transition Economy," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 47(2), pages 40-51, October.
    12. Desierto, Desiree & Koyama, Mark, 2024. "The Political Economy of Status Competition: Sumptuary Laws in Preindustrial Europe," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(2), pages 479-516, June.
    13. Karlan, Dean & McConnell, Margaret A., 2014. "Hey look at me: The effect of giving circles on giving," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 402-412.
    14. Hermes, Henning & Huschens, Martin & Rothlauf, Franz & Schunk, Daniel, 2021. "Motivating low-achievers—Relative performance feedback in primary schools," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 45-59.
    15. Chatterjee, Sheshadri & Chaudhuri, Ranjan & Vrontis, Demetris, 2023. "Masstige marketing: An empirical study of consumer perception and product attributes with moderating role of status, emotion, and pride," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 155(PA).
    16. Zdravka Todorova, 2013. "Connecting social provisioning and functional finance in a post-Keynesian–Institutional analysis of the public sector," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 10(1), pages 61-75.
    17. Roth, Paula, 2020. "Inequality, Relative Deprivation and Financial Distress: Evidence from Swedish Register Data," Working Paper Series 1374, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    18. Peter Kooreman & Adriaan R. Soetevent, 2007. "A discrete-choice model with social interactions: with an application to high school teen behavior," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 599-624.
    19. Aronsson, Thomas & Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Wendner, Ronald, 2019. "Charity, Status, and Optimal Taxation: Welfarist and Paternalist Approaches," Umeå Economic Studies 959, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    20. Fatemeh Maleki & Seyed Mohsen Hosseini, 2020. "Charity donation intention via m-payment apps: donor-related, m-payment system-related, or charity brand-related factors, which one is overkill?," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 17(4), pages 409-443, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labour market; cycle of work-and-spend; free time; leisure industries; Spain;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Industrial Sociology (FCT-UNL)

    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:uam:wpaper:200806. 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: Andrés Maroto-Sánchez (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dauames.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.