Content area
Full text
J Happiness Stud (2011) 12:225243 DOI 10.1007/s10902-010-9188-8
RESEARCH PAPER
Published online: 11 February 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract This paper compares the working hours and life satisfaction of Americans and Europeans using the World Values Survey, Eurobarometer and General Social Survey. The purpose is to explore the relationship between working hours and happiness in Europe and America. Previous research on the topic does not test the premise that working more makes Americans happier than Europeans. The ndings suggest that Americans may be happier working more because they believe more than Europeans do that hard work is associated with success.
Keywords Life satisfaction Working hours Europe USA
1 Introduction
Americans work 50% more than the Germans, the French and the Italians (Prescott 2004). Explanations about this phenomenon generally fall into one of two groups: economic and cultural.
According to Prescott (2004), Americans work more than Europeans because of domestic tax rates; tax rates affect labor supply (assuming it is not xed). There are lower tax rates in the US than in Europe, and hence working more pays off more in the US. Michelacci and Pijoan-Mas (2007a, b) posit that US job inequality leads to within-skill wage differences that provide incentives to work longer hours. In Europe these incentives are not that strong. Essentially, the market return on observed skills is much higher in the US than in Europe (Michelacci and Pijoan-Mas 2007b). In addition, Alesina et al. (2004) argue that opportunities for social mobility are (or are perceived to be) higher in the US than in Europe. In other words, working longer hours does (or appears to) pay off more in the US than in Europe. The nal economic explanation is that working hours differential is
Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn is indebted to Micah Altman and Ben Gaddis.
A. Okulicz-Kozaryn (&)
Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Europeans Work to Live and Americans Live to Work (Who is Happy to Work More: Americans or Europeans?)
Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn
123
226 A. Okulicz-Kozaryn
2.12.152.22.252.3
Fig. 1 Happiness by working hours categories in the US and Europe. Data are described in Sect. 3
due to unionization and labor regulations (Wharton 2006; Alesina et al. 2005). European workers are far more unionized than their...