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Recent research shows that income inequality is increasing in the United States--particularly between well-educated and less-educated American workers. But income is not the sole measure of prosperity. We also value the time we spend off the clock. Therefore, the amount of leisure time Americans have is also crucial to our
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understanding of American well-being.
Has leisure time, for the average American, increased or decreased over the last several decades? Does it vary across groups with different education levels? To what extent do education, employment rates, or other alternative explanations account for these differences? How much can be attributed to sheer preference for leisure? In The Increase in Leisure Inequality, 1965-2005 (AEI Press, 2009), Professors Mark Aguiar of the University of Rochester and Erik Hurst of the University of Chicago use data spanning forty years and tens of thousands of survey respondents to examine trends in leisure inequality. Rather than just equating income to well-being, the authors offer a more complete picture of American well-being than would have been obtained by measuring income inequality alone.
At this event, Professor Aguiar will discuss the important implications of his findings for American employment and welfare policy. He will be joined by Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI, and Jay Stewart of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. AEI's Henry Olsen will moderate.
| 12:00 p.m. | Registration and Luncheon | |
| 12:30 | Presenter: | Mark Aguiar, University of Rochester |
| Discussants: | Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI | |
| Jay Stewart, Bureau of Labor Statistics | ||
| Moderator: | Henry Olsen, AEI | |
| 2:00 | Adjournment |
Speaker biographies
Mark Aguiar is an associate professor of economics at the University of Rochester and coauthor, with Erik Hurst, of The Increase in Leisure Inequality, 1965-2005 (AEI Press, 2009). Mr. Aguiar is a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, an associate editor for the Review of Economic Dynamics, and a member of the board of editors for the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. Mr. Aguiar's interests span a number of fields, including the study of life-cycle consumption and savings, the interplay of time allocation and consumption, trends in time allocation, current account dynamics, sovereign debt, emerging-market business cycles, and growth. His research has appeared in top economic journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Mr. Aguiar, along with Mr. Hurst, received the 2006 TIAA-CREF Paul Samuelson Award for best published paper dealing with household financial security for "Consumption vs. Expenditure" (Journal of Political Economy, October 2005). Mr. Aguiar previously served in the U.S. Foreign Service with postings in Korea and China, as well as at the Department of State in Washington, D.C.
Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at AEI and is also a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle. He serves on the advisory board of the Korea Economic Institute of America and is a founding member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Mr. Eberstadt is currently, inter alia, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics and the Visiting Committee for the Harvard School of Public Health. Mr. Eberstadt is regularly consulted by governmental and international organizations, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the World Bank. Mr. Eberstadt has published over three hundred studies and articles in scholarly and popular journals, mainly on topics in demography, international development, and East Asian security. His dozen-plus books and monographs include The Poverty of Communism (Transaction, 1988); The Tyranny of Numbers (AEI Press, 1995); The End of North Korea (AEI Press, 1999); Korea's Future and the Great Powers (University of Washington Press, 2001); The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe (Transaction, 2007); Europe's Coming Demographic Challenge: Unlocking the Value of Health (AEI Press, 2007); and, most recently, The Poverty of 'The Poverty Rate': Measure and Mismeasure of Want in Modern America (AEI Press, 2008).
Henry Olsen is vice president and director of the National Research Initiative (NRI) at AEI. He disseminates and publicizes the Institute's work to the academic community; works with AEI's visiting, adjunct, and NRI research fellows; commissions and supervises NRI projects; and oversees the production of NRI publications. Mr. Olsen previously served as vice president for programs at the Manhattan Institute and as a judicial clerk to the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Danny J. Boggs.
Jay Stewart is a research economist on the Employment Research and Program Development staff at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Previously, he was a faculty member at Tulane University and an economist at Unicon Research Corporation. His past research has examined contracting under moral hazard and adverse selection, trends in real wages and hours worked, trends in job stability and security, nonworking men, and income inequality. His current research interests include time use, the role employers play in wage determination, and measurement issues. His work has been published in a variety of academic journals, including Journal of Population Economics, Social Indicators Research, Monthly Labor Review, Demography, and Journal of Economic Perspectives.
