Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men / Mark Aguiar, Mark Bils, Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Aguiar, Mark.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bils, Mark.

Charles, Kerwin Kofi.

Hurst, Erik.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23552.

NBER working paper series no. w23552

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

Younger men, ages 21 to 30, exhibited a larger decline in work hours over the last fifteen years than older men or women. Since 2004, time-use data show that younger men distinctly shifted their leisure to video gaming and other recreational computer activities. We propose a framework to answer whether improved leisure technology played a role in reducing younger men's labor supply. The starting point is a leisure demand system that parallels that often estimated for consumption expenditures. We show that total leisure demand is especially sensitive to innovations in leisure luxuries, that is, activities that display a disproportionate response to changes in total leisure time. We estimate that gaming/recreational computer use is distinctly a leisure luxury for younger men. Moreover, we calculate that innovations to gaming/recreational computing since 2004 explain on the order of half the increase in leisure for younger men, and predict a decline in market hours of 1.5 to 3.0 percent, which is 38 and 79 percent of the differential decline relative to older men.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2017.