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I don't know if its true that the median wealthy person has more leisure time available to them. > According to the Census Bureau, the average wealthy househol
by bko 8y ago
I don't know if its true that the median wealthy person has more leisure time available to them.
> According to the Census Bureau, the average wealthy household (defined by the IRS as the top 20% of income earners in the US) worked five times as many hours as the average poor household. The cause? Single-parent households and high unemployment among poor households. [0]
Although I imagine they may spend less time doing household chores or running errands
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/common-myths-about-rich-people-2015-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/common-myths-about-rich-peop...
- alistairSH 8y agoCounting work hours by household seems a bit weird. I'm married, my wife and I work fairly typical 40-45 hour weeks. So, 80-90 for the household. My son is single. He works the same 40-45 hours. But, by the metric above, my household works twice as much. Sure, we literally do, but we have twice the manpower and twice the income. And still have the same amount of leisure time per person.
- iguy 8y agoIndeed it's an odd measure. But still, a factor 5? It can't be common for top-20% households to contain more than two full-time workers.
- alistairSH 8y agoIn a sibling comment, somebody linked to an article [0] that describes the wealth/free-time paradox. Basically, poor people are extremely underemployed (particularly young white males) and frequently stuck in part-time jobs (or unemployed completely). If a poor person is only able to find 10 hours/week employment, I'm at 4x that. If the poor person is single, my household is 8x because there's two of us. 0 - https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-free-time-paradox-in-america/499826/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-fre...