Post-industrious society: Why work time will not disappear for our grandchildren

Séminaire de l’OSC, séance exceptionnelle, mardi 25 novembre 2014, 12h-14h30, salle A. Percheron, 98 rue de l’Université Paris 7e

Jonathan Gershuny, Professeur de sociologie, Université d’Oxford, co-directeur du Center for Time-Use Research

Post-industrious society:  Why work time will not disappear for our grandchildren

This sets out a comprehensive discussion of the long-term evolution of time budgets in a range of economically developed democracies, summarising arguments about the changing balances of paid and unpaid work and leisure. It contrast economists’ assumptions about the purely instrumental nature of work, with sociological and social-psychological arguments as to why we might want or need work in and for itself. It use evidence from 16 countries drawn from the day-diaries included in the Multinational Time Use Study to describe trends in work over five decades. It demonstrate\: (1) the approximate historical constancy and cross-national similarity in the total of paid plus unpaid work time over the last 50 or so years; (2) a gender convergence in work patterns and the approximate gender-equality of total (paid plus unpaid) work; and (3) a reversal in the human-capital-related work-leisure gradient (the better-educated now work more), which we associate with a growth of “exploit” and a decline in “industriousness” in the paid work of early 21st century societies.

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