The overworked american

Juliet B. Schor (b. 1955) is a professor at Harvard University, where she is both Senior Lecturer on Economics and also Director of Women's Studies. In her book The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1991), she analyzes some surprising trends-historic, economic, and cultural-in the world of work, with a particular emphasis on the American worker. In the following excerpt from The Overworked American, Schor examines the shifting balance between work and leisure time, a phenomenon of late twentieth-century life that has produced increasing stress on the individual, the family, and society as a whole. Citing the constant increase in productivity since midcentury, she asks, "Why has leisure been such a conspicuous casualty of prosperity?" To answer the question she probes the values of our culture, examines consumer habits in our four-decade-long national spending spree, and critiques the economic ideals of American capitalism.