American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
How Do Hours Worked Vary with Income? Cross-Country Evidence and Implications
American Economic Review
vol. 108,
no. 1, January 2018
(pp. 170–99)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
This paper builds a new internationally comparable database of hours worked to measure how hours vary with income across and within countries. We document that average hours worked per adult are substantially higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries. The pattern of decreasing hours with aggregate income holds for both men and women, for adults of all ages and education levels, and along both the extensive and intensive margin. Within countries, hours worked per worker are also decreasing in the individual wage for most countries, though in the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in the wage. One implication of our findings is that aggregate productivity and welfare differences across countries are larger than currently thought.Citation
Bick, Alexander, Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln, and David Lagakos. 2018. "How Do Hours Worked Vary with Income? Cross-Country Evidence and Implications." American Economic Review, 108 (1): 170–99. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20151720Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- E23 Macroeconomics: Production
- E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
- J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- O11 Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
- O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration