THE BUSY LIFE IN AMERICA BY ERIN HURST

TABLE OF CONTENTS  Reflection Paper I  How Busy Are Americans?  Average Time Use Per Day For Americans  Why The Rich Have Less Leisure Time Than The Poor  The Evolution of Leisure Time  “Leisure Inequality”  Works Cited

REFLECTION I Americans are increasingly getting busier between work, school, and social lives. People are always on the go, families with children have the different activities that each child does. These things cause the families to be out of the house, and sometimes not together, so they are never able to catch up with each other. A lot of young adults who attend college are also working full time jobs, making them too busy to have their social lives, as well. Not having any leisure time or time to spend with family when it’s not always on the go can make people feel overwhelmed and cause problems in the lives of everyone around them.

HOW BUSY ARE AMERICANS? Only 39% of American workers report that their employers provide options for flexible work and 30% say their employers provide benefits that help them more easily meet their non-work demands. One-third of working Americans say that work interfering during personal or family time has a significant impact on their level of work stress, and one in four report that job demands interfere with their ability to fulfill family or home responsibilities. 24% of employees work six or more hours per week without pay, and 47% of management does the same. 18% of U.S. workers put in more than 48 hours a week. One third of U.S. employees are chronically overworked. Furthermore, twenty percent of employees reporting high overwork levels say they make a lot of mistakes at work versus none of those who experience low overwork levels.

WHY THE RICH HAVE LESS LEISURE TIME THAN THE POOR Working hours in the United States have fallen over the past century, but the poor are working less hours than the rich. “In 1965 men with a college degree, who tend to be richer, had a bit more leisure time than men who had only completed high school. But by 2005 the college-educated had eight hours less of it a week than the high-school grads” (Economist). Americans who have a bachelor’s degree or higher, tend to work and average of two more hours each day than those without a high school diploma. “Other research shows that the share of college-educated American men regularly working more than 50 hours a week rose from 24% in 1979 to 28% in 2006, but fell for high-school dropouts” (Economist). One explanation for this phenomenon is that people who make higher wages are more reluctant to miss work because they give up more money. “Since the 1980s the salaries of those at the top have risen strongly, while those below the median have stagnated or fallen. Thus rising inequality encourages the rich to work more and the poor to work less” (Economist).

THE EVOLUTION OF LEISURE TIME Thompson, Derek. "How Did Work-Life Balance in the U.S. Get So Awful?" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 1 June Web. 1 May 2015.

“LEISURE INEQUALITY” The term “leisure inequality” was created by economists to explain the occurrence of the higher rate of leisure time among the people who are less educated. “Poor working men have more leisure time than ever, but the highest educated men have less downtime than they’ve had in 50 years” (Thompson). Highly educated men, who generally have higher incomes, had only 33.2 hours of leisure time a week by 2007, down 1.2 hours from 1985, according to the three National Bureau of Economic Research associates who authored the report. By contrast, men with little education had 39.1 hours a week of free time, up 2.5 hours from Women followed a similar pattern, with the highly educated losing 1.9 hours of leisure time, coming in at 30.3 hours by 2007, and those with little education gaining 0.2 of an hour to 35.2 hours. The highly educated are defined as those who have more than 12 years of schooling, and leisure time is described as activities such as watching television, reading, socializing, and going to the movies.

WORKS CITED "By the Numbers: A Psychologically Healthy Workplace Fact Sheet." APA Center for Organizational Excellence. American Psychological Association, 20 Nov Web. 2 May "Nice Work If You Can Get out." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 19 Apr Web. 1 May Thompson, Derek. "How Did Work-Life Balance in the U.S. Get So Awful?" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 1 June Web. 1 May 2015.