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The Wage and the Length of the Work Day: From the 1890s to 1991

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  • Dora L. Costa

Abstract

I investigate how the relationship between the wage and the length of the work day has changed since the 1890s among prime-aged men and women. I find that across wage deciles deciles, and within industry and occupation groups the most highly paid worked fewer hours than the lowest paid in the 1890s, but that by 1973 differences in hours worked were small and by 1991 the highest paid worked the longest day. Changing labor supply elasticities explain the compression in the distribution of the length of the work day. In the 1890s the labor supply curve was strongly backwards bending, perhaps because men preferred to smooth hours over their work lives rather than bunch them as they do today. In fact, the intertemporal elasticity of substitution was slightly negative in the 1890s, but by 1973 was positive. I show that the unequal distribution of work hours in the past equalized income, but that between 1973 and 1991 it magnified weekly earnings inequality, accounting for 26 percent of earnings inequality between the top and bottom declines among men, more than all of the earnings inequality among women, and 17 percent of the increase in total household earnings inequality among husband and wife households.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 6504.

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Date of creation: Apr 1998
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6504

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  1. Claudia Goldin & Robert A. Margo, 1991. "The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid- Century," NBER Working Papers 3817, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Goldin, Claudia, 1988. "Maximum Hours Legislation and Female Employment: A Reassessment," Scholarly Articles 2645471, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  3. Dora L. Costa, 1997. "Less of a Luxury: The Rise of Recreation since 1888," NBER Working Papers 6054, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Barry Eichengreen, 1987. "The impact of late nineteenth-century unions on labor earnings and hours: Iowa in 1894," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 40(4), pages 501-515, July.
  5. Chinhui Juhn & Kevin M. Murphy, 1996. "Wage Inequality and Family Labor Supply," NBER Working Papers 5459, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Goldin, Claudia, 1988. "Maximum Hours Legislation and Female Employment: A Reassessment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 189-205, February.
  7. Atack, Jeremy & Bateman, Fred, 1992. "How Long Was the Workday in 1880?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(01), pages 129-160, March.
  8. Costa, Dora L, 1995. "Pensions and Retirement: Evidence from Union Army Veterans," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(2), pages 297-319, May.
  9. Shelly J. Lundberg, 1984. "Tied Wage-Hours Offers and the Endogeneity of Wages," NBER Working Papers 1431, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Barzel, Yoram & McDonald, Richard J, 1973. "Assets, Subsistence, and The Supply Curve of Labor," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(4), pages 621-33, September.
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Cited by:
  1. Michelacci, Claudio & Pijoan-Mas, Josep, 2007. "The Effects of Labor Market Conditions on Working Time: the US-EU Experience," CEPR Discussion Papers 6314, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Haoming Liu & Yi Wen & Lijing Zhu, 2005. "Uniform working hours and structural unemployment," Working Papers 2005-045, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  3. Pompermaier, Alberto, 2011. "Job competition, product market competition and welfare," MPRA Paper 35410, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  4. Jeremy Atack & Fred Bateman & Robert A. Margo, 2000. "Productivity in Manufacturing and the Length of the Working Day: Evidence from the 1880 Census of Manufactures," Macroeconomics 0012003, EconWPA.
  5. Julie L. Hotchkiss & Myriam Quispe-Agnoli, 2009. "Employer monopsony power in the labor market for undocumented workers," Working Paper 2009-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
  6. Dora L. Costa, 1999. "American Living Standards: Evidence from Recreational Expenditures," NBER Working Papers 7148, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Thomas Moutos, 2006. "Technological Change, Inequality And Work Sharing," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 53(3), pages 305-318, 07.
  8. Wen, Yi & Zhu, Lijing & Liu, Haoming, 2001. "Uniform Working Hours: A Culprit of Structural Unemployment," Working Papers 01-20, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
  9. Díaz, Antonia & Echevarria, Cristina, 2009. "Why a fixed workweek?," The Journal of Socio-Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 790-798, October.
  10. Huberman, Michael & Minns, Chris, 2007. "The times they are not changin': Days and hours of work in Old and New Worlds, 1870-2000," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 538-567, October.
  11. Gomez Suarez, Manuel A., 2008. "Utility and production externalities, equilibrium efficiency and leisure specification," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1496-1519, December.
  12. Eva Gutiérrez-i-Puigarnau & Jos van Ommeren, 2009. "Labour Supply and Commuting," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 222, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
  13. Lozano, Fernando A., 2009. "The Flexibility of the Workweek in the United States: Evidence from the FIFA World Cup," IZA Discussion Papers 4217, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  14. Eva Gutierrez-i-Puigarnau & Jos van Ommeren, 2009. "Labour Supply and Commuting: Implications for Optimal Road Taxes," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 09-008/3, Tinbergen Institute.

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