The effect of hours of work on social interaction
Abstract
Over time, increases in hours of work per capita have created the intuitively plausible notion that there is less time available to pursue social interactions. The specific question addressed in this paper is the effect of hours of work on social interaction. This is a difficult empirical question since omitted factors could increase both hours of work and social interaction. The approach taken in this paper utilizes an exogenous decline in hours of work in France due to a new employment law. The results clearly show that the employment law reduced hours of work but there is no evidence that the extra hours went to increased social interactions. Although hours of work are not an important determinant of social interaction, human capital is found to be important. The effect of human capital, as measured by education and age, is positive for membership groups but negative for visiting relatives and friends. Also, contrary to expectations, there are no important differences in the determinants of social interaction by gender, marital status or parent status. Finally, a comparison between France and the US show that the response to human capital and other variables are much the same in both nations.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Springer in its journal Review of Economics of the Household.
Volume (Year): 10 (2012)
Issue (Month): 2 (June)
Pages: 237-258
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=109451
Related research
Keywords: Social interaction; France; Time use; Hours of work; J290;Other versions of this item:
- Henry Saffer & Karine Lamiraud, 2008. "The Effect of Hours of Work on Social Interaction," NBER Working Papers 13743, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Marcello M. Estevão & Filipa Sa, 2006.
"Are the French Happy with the 35-Hour Workweek?,"
IMF Working Papers
06/251, International Monetary Fund.
- Estevão, Marcello & Sa, Filipa, 2006. "Are the French Happy with the 35-Hour Workweek?," IZA Discussion Papers 2459, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- La Porta, Rafael, et al, 1997.
"Trust in Large Organizations,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 333-38, May.
- Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1996. "Trust in Large Organizations," NBER Working Papers 5864, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Dora L. Costa & Matthew E. Kahn, 2001. "Understanding the Decline in Social Capital, 1952-1998," NBER Working Papers 8295, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Rupasingha, Anil & Goetz, Stephan J. & Freshwater, David, 2006. "The production of social capital in US counties," The Journal of Socio-Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 83-101, February.
- Lionel Prouteau & François-Charles Wolff, 2002. "La participation associative au regard des temps sociaux," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 352(1), pages 57-80.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Vinod Mishra & Russell Smyth, 2012. "Work Hours in Chinese Enterprises: Evidence From Matched Employer-Employee Data," Monash Economics Working Papers 10-12, Monash University, Department of Economics.
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