Freakonomics - Baby Boomer= s - Aging - Middle Age - Economics - New York Times

May 6, 2007

Freakonomics

Laid-Back Labor

By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT

The $140 Homemade Scarf

During the late 19th century, piano manufacturing was = one of New York City’s

largest industries. Every right-minded American family, it seemed, wanted to

fill its home with music. T= he advent of the player piano — a music-making

machine that required zero = talent — drove the boom even further. By the 1920s,

some 300,000 pianos were be= ing sold in the United States each year, roughly

two-thirds of them player p= ianos.

But a pair of newer technologies, the radio and the phonograph, soon began to

drive the piano into a deep disfavor that continues to this day. Last year,

Americans bought only 76,966 pianos. That’s a de= crease of 75 percent over a

period in which the populat= ion more than doubled. As much as people may love

music, most of them apparen= tly don’t feel the need to make it for themselves.

According to Census Bureau statistics, only 7.3 percen= t of American adults have

played a musical instrument= in the past 12 months.

Compare this with the 17.5 percent of adults who curre= ntly engage in what the

Census Bureau calls “cooking for fun.” Or consider that 41 percent of households

have flower gardens, 25 per= cent raise vegetables and 13 percent grow fruit trees

— even though just 1 = percent of Americans live on a farm today, down from 30

percent in 1920. On a more = personal note: one of the authors of this column has

a sister who runs a thrivin= g yarn store, while the other is married to a

knitting devotee who might = buy $40 worth of yarn for a single scarf and then

spend 10 hours knitting it.= Even if her labor is valued at only $10 an hour, the

scarf costs at least $140 &= #8212; or roughly $100 more than a similar machine-made

scarf might cost.

Isn’t it puzzling that so many middle-aged Ameri= cans are spending so much of

their time and money perfor= ming menial labors when they don’t have to? Just as

the radio and phonograph pr= oved to be powerful substitutes for the piano, the

forces of technology and ca= pitalism have greatly eased the burden of feeding and

clothing ourselves. So what= ’s with all the knitting, gardening and “cooking for=

fun”? Why do some for= ms of menial labor survive as hobbies while others have

been killed off? (For insta= nce, we can’t think of a single person who, since the

invention of the washing ma= chine, practices “laundry for fun.”)

Economists have been trying for decades to measure how= much leisure time people

have and how they spend it,= but there has been precious little consensus. This

is in part because it’= ;s hard to say what constitutes leisure and in part because

measurements of leisure ove= r the years have not been very consistent.

Economists typically separate our daily activities into three categories: market

work (which produces income= ), home production (unpaid chores) and pure leisure.

How, then, are we to categorize knitting, gardening and cooking? While preparing

meals at home can certainly= be much cheaper than dining out and therefore viewed

as home production, what ab= out the “cooking for fun” factor?

In an attempt to address such gray areas, the economis= ts Valerie A. Ramey and

Neville Francis classified certain home activities as = labor and others as

leisure. In their recent pa= per “A Century of Work and Leisure,” they employed a

1985 time-use survey in which people ranked their enjo= yment of various

activities on a scale of 0 = to 10. Knitting, gardening and cooking were in the

middle of the scale, with a= 7.7, 7.1 and 6.6, respectively. These ranked well

behind the three favorite activities — sex, playing sports and fishing (which

scored 9.3, 9.2 and 9.1) &#= 8212; but firmly ahead of paying bills, cleaning the house

and, yes, doing the laundry= (5.2, 4.9 and 4.8).

But here’s where it gets tricky. Ramey and Franc= is decided that anything at or

above a 7.3 is leisure, whi= le anything below is home production. (Knitting,

therefore, makes the grade = as leisure; gardening and cooking do not.) This leads

them to calculate that we s= pend less time doing market work today than we did in

1900 but more time in home product= ion. Men, it seems, have contributed mightily

to this upsurge: in 1920, e= mployed men spent only two or three hours a week on

home production, but they a= veraged 11 hours by 1965 and 16 hours by 2004.

But how many of those home-production hours are in fact leisure hours? This, it

seems, is the real question= here: What makes a certain activity work for one

person and leisure for anot= her?

With no disrespect toward Ramey and Francis, how about= this for an alternative

definition: Whether or not you’re getting paid, it’s work if someone else tells

you to do it and leisure if= you choose to do it yourself. If you are the sort of

person who likes to mow his= own lawn even though you can afford to pay someone

to do it, consider how you&= #8217;d react if your neighbor offered to pay you the going

rate to mow his lawn. The o= dds are that you wouldn’t accept his job offer.

And so a great many people who can afford not to perfo= rm menial labor choose to

do so, because — well= , why? An evolutionary biologist might say that embedded in

our genes is a drive to fee= d and clothe ourselves and tame our surroundings. An

economist, meanwhile, might= argue that we respond to incentives that go well

beyond the financial; and t= hat, mercifully, we are left free to choose which

tasks we want to do ourselv= es.

Granted, these choices may say a good bit about who we are and where we come

from. One of us, for instan= ce (the economist, who lives in Chicago), grew up

comfortably in a Midwestern= city and has fond memories of visiting his

grandparents’ small f= arm. This author recently bought an indoor hydroponic plant

grower. It cost about $150 = and to date has produced approximately 14 cherry

tomatoes — which, onc= e you factor in the cost of seeds, electricity and even a

nominal wage for the labor,= puts the average price of a single tomato at roughly

$20.

The other one of us (the journalist, who lives in New = York) grew up on a small

farm and was regularly enga= ged in all sorts of sowing, mucking and reaping. He,

therefore, has little vesti= gial desire to grow his own food — but he is happy to

spend hours shopping for and preparing a special dinner for family and friends.

Such dinners, even if the labor were valued at only $1= 0 an hour, are more

expensive than a commensura= te takeout meal.

Maybe someday the New York guy will get to cook a meal= with some of the Chicago

guy’s cherry tomatoes= . Add in another $32 for next-day shipping, and it might

become one of the most expe= nsive meals in recent memory — and, surely, worth

every penny.

Stephen J. Dubner and Stev= en D. Levitt are the authors of “Freakonomics.&= #8221; More

information on the research= behind this column is online at

www.freakonomics.com.

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