[JASchilz]

You make a few substantial points, but any use of the "single income earner" argument is incomplete if it doesn't acknowledge that _women were also working at home_ while their husbands were doing income-earning work.

It's not only income-earning work that counts against prosperity: it's all work. Studies indicate that men and women gained 6-8 hours of leisure from 1965-2003. There are probably caveats and addenda to that, and you make other good points, but please also consider non-income work in your arguments.

Ref: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/55560/1/508634636.pd...

[another-cuppa]

So who does the work at home now? Both partners after they get home from work? That doesn't sound like a better deal to me.

[JASchilz]

There are fewer hours of work done at home now. The increase in leisure time reflects a decrease in total labor: income-earning labor, labor around the house, etc. Figures in [1] break it out a bit, although the years-reflected are a bit different than I used above. Search for "60.9" to find the relevant table.

[1]: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/

[another-cuppa]

That compares the 1960s to the 1980s. A lot has changed in 30 years. In particular Financialisation has increased dramatically. Are there any more recent figures?

Also, less work being done at home isn't necessarily a good thing. More people eating microwaved ready meals or takeaways probably means lower quality of life overall.

[JASchilz]

My comment was a rebuttal to the "single income earner" argument which suggests that in the post-war era we labored half as much as we do today.

I've got no other points to defend. But I'm happy to look at any of your points, and I understand and accept the argument that hours of leisure time is not a direct measurement of well-being. (:

[watwut]

Labor force participation of women in 1950 was 33.9 while males 86.4. So while males worked much more, the framing that makes it sound like women did not worked at all is false.

Upper and middle class women did not worked, poorer women (significant part of population) did and had to work.

[dabbledash]

I think you’re missing your parent comment’s point. Women who were not working for wages were usually still working in the home.

[pixl97]

Can part of the increase of leisure time be explained by a drop in the number of children per family?

[JASchilz]

That's probably one of the caveats and addenda. So, my counterargument doesn't prove that life has gotten better--maybe an additional kid is "better" than six hours of leisure time by some calculuses. But it does rebut any argument that we used to get by one 40 hours per week per household of labor but now we need 80.

Edit: Of course, as parent notes the drop in number of children represents at most _part_ of the increase in leisure hours. We can definitely attribute part of it to things that are definitely modern advantages, like labor-saving devices such as dish-washing machines. The year 1965 is kind of a poor year for my argument, in that by that point most households had the most labor-saving devices: refrigerators that allow you to shop and cook days at a time, washing machines that saved many hours of labor washing clothes, etc.