Leisure: Feast or Famine?

Abstract

ABSTRACTTwo quite contrasting and contradictory views are found in current discussion of the changing pattern of leisure time, the first being that we must face up to the prospect of a continuing, and perhaps increasing, high level of involuntary leisure — unemployement —, and the second being that we have too little leisure — we attempt to fit too many consumption activities into too little time. This paper attempts to find out whether these views are mutually exclusive — if so, which of them is true?, or whether they could both be true of the same society. Data set from a new multinational, inter-temporal time budget survey is used to answer these questions. It shows that in the mood of economic depression and uncertainty of the 1980s, employers have rather increased the amount of paid work rather than provide new jobs, so paid work time does not reduce, and the new domestic technologies have less effect in reducing domestic work time than they did in the 1960s. Therefore those who have work and money a...