The Shortening of the American Work Week: An Economic and Historical Analysis of Its Context, Causes, and Consequences

Whaples, Robert

doi:10.1017/s0022050700039073

Cited by 26 publications

(27 citation statements)

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“…Wage dispersion in manufacturing, 1890-1990. Sources: 1890-1914: Rees (19611899-19471914-19461929-199: National Income and Product Accounts;1947-1990 Bureau of Labor S(atiscs …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A 10 percentage point drop in union density is associated with Unionization data for 1909 for four-digit industries are imputed from Whaples (1990), who developed his estimates by breaking out the assignments of union members to industries by Wolman (1936) more finely. In the cases where Whaples does not report a union density estimate, it is assumed to be zero.…”

Section: Produc4virymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Updated Notes on the Interindustry Wage Structure

Allen

1994

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“…Wage dispersion in manufacturing, 1890-1990. Sources: 1890-1914: Rees (19611899-19471914-19461929-199: National Income and Product Accounts;1947-1990 Bureau of Labor S(atiscs …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Produc4virymentioning

confidence: 99%

Updated Notes on the Interindustry Wage Structure

Allen

1994

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“…4 In the following Great Depression and New Deal, working hours further decreased to 34 hours within only 5 years (Whaples 1991(Whaples , 2001). The reduction of weekly working hours was strongly supported by both the Hoover and the Roosevelt administrations.…”

Section: Work-sharing During the Great Depression In The Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, after becoming president, Roosevelt stopped to support the bill, and presented the 'President's Reemployment Act' as an alternative (Whaples 1991). In the economic recovery after the end of the depression, average weekly work hours slowly increased from their low in 1934, and with Roosevelt's Reemployment Act "the momentum toward the thirty-hour week had dissipated" (Whaples 1991). Eighty years later, the thirtyhour work-week in the U.S. sounds like an utopia.…”

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confidence: 99%

Work-sharing for a sustainable economy

Zwickl

Disslbacher

Stagl

2016

Ecological Economics

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Achieving low unemployment in an environment of weak growth is a major policy challenge; a more egalitarian distribution of hours worked could be the key to solving it. Whether worksharing actually increases employment, however, has been debated controversially. In this article we present stylized facts on the distribution of hours worked and discuss the role of work-sharing for a sustainable economy. Building on recent developments in labor market theory we review the determinants of working long hours and its effect on well-being. Finally, we survey work-sharing reforms in the past. While there seems to be a consensus that worksharing in the Great Depression in the U.S. and in the Great Recession in Europe was successful in reducing employment losses, perceptions of the work-sharing reforms implemented between the 1980s and early 2000s are more ambivalent. However, even the most critical evaluations of these reforms provide no credible evidence of negative employment effects; instead, the overall success of the policy seems to depend on the economic and institutional setting, as well as the specific details of its implementation.

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“…1. Average weekly hours worked -Notes: The data for total hours is from Whaples (1990 , Table 2.1, part A), for the period 1830-1880, Kendrick (1961, Tables A-IV and A-X) for the period for 1890-1940and McGrattan and Rogerson (2004 Whaples (1990, 1 The source for Fig. 2 is Costa (1998, Table 2).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

2013

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

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a b s t r a c tDuring the first half of the 20th century the length of the workweek in the U.S. declined, and its distribution across wage deciles narrowed. The hypothesis is twofold. First, technological progress, through the rise in wages and the decreasing cost of recreation, made it possible for the average U.S. worker to afford more time off from work. Second, changes in the wage distribution explain the changes in the distribution of hours. A general equilibrium model is built to explore whether such mechanisms can quantitatively account for the observations. The model is calibrated to the U.S. economy in 1900. It predicts 82% of the observed decline in hours, and most of the contraction in their dispersion. The decline in the price of leisure goods accounts for 7% of the total decline in hours.

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The Shortening of the American Work Week: An Economic and Historical Analysis of Its Context, Causes, and Consequences

Cited by 26 publications

References 1 publication

Updated Notes on the Interindustry Wage Structure

Updated Notes on the Interindustry Wage Structure

Work-sharing for a sustainable economy

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

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