| A radical alternative explanation... is that there might not be an individual microlevel explanation, but instead a macrolevel answer. Perhaps it is not so much a leisure preference as a consumption-time requirement: a society may need more leisure time to consume its growing product in -- or indeed use more leisure time, in a manner that sounds paradoxical but is not, to stimulate the consumption that provides more jobs . |
| But it may be that the causal arrow points, not from economic growth to leisure, but in the opposite direction, from leisure to economic growth. |
[F]ar from being an indicator of a post-materialist society, increasing leisure time may well be the mechanism for maintaining the stability of an ever more materialist society. Growth in leisure time promotes, enables, in part causes, stable economic growth. More leisure time provides the extra time for consumption, which allows the number of jobs to be maintained despite labour productivity growth. More leisure means more work. (And we must be concerned, not just with how much leisure, but also with the nature of the leisure activities. More high-value-added leisure consumption means more high-value-added jobs.) |
| Source: Jonathan Gershuny, Changing Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 8, 134, 135. |