Finance & economics | Free exchange

Nice work if you can get out

Why the rich now have less leisure than the poor

FOR most of human history rich people had the most leisure. In “Downton Abbey”, a drama about the British upper classes of the early 20th century, one aloof aristocrat has never heard of the term “weekend”: for her, every day is filled with leisure. On the flip side, the poor have typically slogged. Hans-Joachim Voth, an economic historian at the University of Zurich, shows that in 1800 the average English worker laboured for 64 hours a week. “In the 19th century you could tell how poor somebody was by how long they worked,” says Mr Voth.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Nice work if you can get out”

Insatiable

From the April 19th 2014 edition

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