SECTION 3 Questions 28 - 40Read the text and answer Questions 28 - 40
LEISURE TIME IN AMERICA
A As most Americans will tell you if you can stop them long enough to ask, working people in the United
States are as busy as ever. Sure, technology and competition are boosting the economy; but nearly everyone
thinks they have increased the demands on people at home and in the workplace. But is the overworked
American a creature of myth?
B A pair of economists have looked closely at how Americans actually spend their time. Mark Aguiar, at
the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Erik Hurst, at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of
Business constructed four different measures of leisure. The narrowest includes only activities that nearly
everyone considers relaxing or fun; the broadest counts anything that is not related to a paying job,
housework or errands as "leisure". No matter how the two economists slice the data, Americans seem to
have much more free time than before.
C Over the past four decades, depending on which of their measures one uses, the amount of time that
working-age Americans are devoting to leisure activities has risen by 4-8 hours a week. For somebody
working 40 hours a week, that is equivalent to 5-10 weeks of extra holiday a year. Nearly every category of
American has more spare time: single or married, with or without children, both men and women.
Americans may put in longer hours at the office than other countries, but that is because average hours in
the workplace in other rich countries have dropped sharply.
D How then have Messrs Aguiar and Hurst uncovered a more relaxed America, where leisure has actually
increased? It is partly to do with the definition of work, and partly to do with the data they base their
research upon. Most American labour studies rely on well-known official surveys, such as those collected by
the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) and the Census Bureau, that concentrate on paid work. These are good
at gleaning trends in factories and offices, but they give only a murky impression of how Americans use the
rest of their time. Messrs Aguiar and Hurst think that the hours spent at your employer's are too narrow a
definition of work. Americans also spend lots of time shopping, cooking, running errands and keeping
house. These chores are among the main reasons why people say they are so overstretched, especially
working women with children.
E However, Messrs Aguiar and Hurst show that Americans actually spend much less time doing them than
they did 40 years ago. There has been a revolution in the household economy. Appliances, home delivery,
the internet, 24-hour shopping, and more varied and affordable domestic services have increased flexibility
and freed up people's time.
F The data for Messrs Aguiar and Hurst's study comes from time-use diaries that American social
scientists have been collecting methodically, once a decade, since 1965. These diaries ask people to give
detailed information on everything they did the day before, and for how long they did it. The beauty of such
surveys, which are also collected in Australia and many European countries, is that they cover the whole day,
not just the time at work, and they also have a built-in accuracy check, since they must always account for
every hour of the day.
G Do the numbers add up? One thing missing in Messrs Aguiar's and Hurst's work is that they have
deliberately ignored the biggest leisure-gainers in the population, the growing number of retired folk. The
two economists excluded anyone who has reached 65 years old, as well as anyone under that age who retired
early. So America's true leisure boom is even bigger than their estimate.
H The biggest theoretical problem with time diaries is "multi-tasking". Do you measure the time you
spend cleaning your house while listening to portable music as "leisure" or "work"? This problem may be
exaggerated: usually people seem to combine two work activities, using a laptop computer on a plane, or two
leisure ones, watching television and doing something else. The two economists counted many
combinations of work and leisure, such as reading a novel while commuting or goofing off on the internet at
the office, as time spent working.
I Is all this leisure a good thing? Some part-time workers might well wish they had less leisure and more
income. For most Americans, however, the leisure dividend appears to be a bonus. Using average hourly
wages after tax, Steven Davis, a colleague of Mr Hurst's, reckons that the national value of five extra hours of
leisure per week is $570 billion, or $3,300 per worker, every year.
Questions 28 - 40
The text has nine paragraphs, A-I
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Match each heading to the most suitable paragraph.
i One possible source of inaccuracies
iii A difference between perception and reality
iv The value of extra leisure time
v Americans are working harder
vi Significantly more free time
vii The effect of including retirees
viii The need for a wider description of work
ix An effective system for measuring time spent
x How Americans think about their time
28 x
29 iii
30 vi
31 viii
32 ii
33 ix
34 vii
35 i
36 iv
37 C
38 A
39 C
40 B
No comments:
Post a Comment