Harried Leisure Class

The Harried Leisure Class was written by Staffan Burenstam Linder, professor of economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. In a concise and thought-provoking book marking a departure from the majority of his writings on international trade, Linder challenged his fellow economists to consider the consumption of time in the same way that they considered monetary consumption. From this starting point, in The Harried Leisure Class, he presents a depressing but recognizable vision of the negative consequences of economic growth in affluent economies.

The title of the book makes reference to Thorstein Veblens's classic The Theory of the Leisure Class, written in 1899, in which Veblen describes an emerging ruling class who are in fact a “leisure class,” doing very little productive work. Linder's title makes direct play on this by suggesting that the “leisure class” have become, in modern times, a “harried leisure class.” The theoretical structure of The Harried Leisure Class, which Linder calls “a theory of time allocation,” begins by drawing attention to the existence of two main types of competing resources in the process of consumption—time and goods—with the implication that as one increases, the other must decrease. The argument is based on the economic logic of a vicious circle in which increasing rates of productivity must be matched by an increasing acceleration in consumption. Consumption, however, takes time, so that in a situation of economic growth, consumers need to consume a larger number of goods per unit of time. The outcome is an acceleration of the pace of life in high-income countries where there is an abundance of commodities, thus creating a “harried leisure class.” In addition, increases in productivity do not necessarily mean that people work less—indeed, the more goods that are owned, the greater the time needed for their maintenance and servicing, and hence the time spent in domestic work can also rise. The overall increases in time necessary to sustain greater levels of consumption in high income countries also means that, contrary to intuition, other aspects of the quality of life tend to decline—the quality of services declines as their quantity increases, as does the decision-making capabilities of the consumer faced with an over-abundance of consumption goods and an increased opportunity cost of the time required to make an informed purchase. Consequently, less time is taken on each act of purchase, which becomes increasingly irrational.

For an affluent society to continue to consume more in a situation of rising productivity, Linder proposes three mechanisms by which the “time-yield” (the way in which leisure goods are combined with leisure activities) of consumption may be increased. First, consumption goods are continually replaced with newer ones. Second, more than one type of consumption good may be consumed simultaneously (eating in front of the TV, for example). Third, goods are consumed consecutively, but each one for a shorter duration of time. Whether there is an increase in the total duration of time spent in consumption due to these mechanisms cannot be determined, but for certain types of goods, at least, there is a

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