Does Labor Time Decrease With Industrialization? A Survey of Time-Allocation Studies [and Comments and Reply]

Theoretical debate on the evolution of human labor is addressed in this paper. In particular, the direction of change in family labor time from preindustrial food production to postindustrial wage labor is examined through a survey of time-allocation studies. The research is concerned not only with the quantitative results of the studies, but also with their methodological construction, in particular, the ethnographers' definition of labor. Unlike earlier attempts to test labor theories with time allocation studies, this research includes both productive and reproductive work. Using a comprehensive definition of labor, the survey brings into question certain theoretical assumptions about the evolution of family labor, in particular that transition from food-producing household economies to industrialized wage labor brings about the demise of the family as a labor group. What the measures of productive and reproductive labor indicate, and what has not been sufficiently emphasized by scholars of the family, is that with transition to a postindustrial labor market economy there might be more of a reallocation of family labor than a reduction of it. That is, the studies show an overall decrease in labor time outside the home and an overall increase in labor time inside the home in activities pertaining to the maintenance of the family itself. These increases in family labor are, in part, explained by changes in the educational requirements of laborers since the time of the Industrial Revolution.

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