3 ms·

I’m virtually certain that if you compare hours worked among households worth $20 million and households worth $1.2 million (controlling for retirement age), th

I’m virtually certain that if you compare hours worked among households worth $20 million and households worth $1.2 million (controlling for retirement age), the former is significantly higher. In theory ultra high wealth buys the luxury of leisure. In practice, in the US today, leisure monotonically decreases with income and wealth. By far the bottom quintile works much fewer hours than the top 1%.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Wouldn't that be axiomatically true, given that the bottom quintile would contain all of the unemployed?
mdorazio 5y ago
Ok I’ll admit I didn’t believe this, but it turns out it’s partially true [1]. Hours worked by wage group increases up to the 95% level, then drops again. So the bottom quintile works substantially fewer hours than the top quintile of earners, but the top 5% work fewer hours than the top 90-95%. Edit: forgot link [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/ib348-trends-us-work-hours-wages-1979-2007/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ib348-trends-us-work-hours-w...
medvezhenok 5y ago
Citation needed. And also depends on the definition of work. If we define work as trading health for pay (whether mental or physical), then I'm not sure there is a monotonically increasing relationship. If we define work as "hours spent doing something", then potentially. But I like my first definition better.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Being a CEO is one of the highest impact careers in terms of lowering life expectancy. Most high paid careers are extremely stressful and come with more serious health impact than the average worker. https://www.businessinsider.com/stress-effect-on-aging-health-life-expectancy-ceos-executives-leaders-2021-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/stress-effect-on-aging-healt...
  - medvezhenok 5y ago
    > Being a CEO is one of the highest impact careers in terms of lowering life expectancy. Most high paid careers are extremely stressful and come with more serious health impact than the average worker. Perhaps, though that effect must be offset by other things (and/or access to healthcare), since the life expectancy based on income graph is monotonically increasing for both genders. http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/ http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/ My hunch is that the well off might have stress on the job (though again, this is a subset of well-paid positions, and I think the subset is actually smaller than you think), but everyone else has a lot more stress outside of the job which is much more important. The stress associated with poverty cannot be understated - it lowers IQ by ~15 points. (Poverty and IQ: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-how-poverty-can-drive-down-intelligence https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-h...)
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Middle managers are more stressed than CEO's. Responsibilities cause stress, but power to address those responsibilities mitigates it somewhat. CEO's have much more of that power than middle managers do. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/middle-managers-are-miserable-.aspx https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-re...

blacksmith_tb 5y ago

Wouldn't that be axiomatically true, given that the bottom quintile would contain all of the unemployed?

mdorazio 5y ago

Ok I’ll admit I didn’t believe this, but it turns out it’s partially true [1]. Hours worked by wage group increases up to the 95% level, then drops again. So the bottom quintile works substantially fewer hours than the top quintile of earners, but the top 5% work fewer hours than the top 90-95%. Edit: forgot link [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/ib348-trends-us-work-hours-wages-1979-2007/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ib348-trends-us-work-hours-w...

medvezhenok 5y ago

Citation needed. And also depends on the definition of work. If we define work as trading health for pay (whether mental or physical), then I'm not sure there is a monotonically increasing relationship. If we define work as "hours spent doing something", then potentially. But I like my first definition better.

dcolkitt 5y ago
Being a CEO is one of the highest impact careers in terms of lowering life expectancy. Most high paid careers are extremely stressful and come with more serious health impact than the average worker. https://www.businessinsider.com/stress-effect-on-aging-health-life-expectancy-ceos-executives-leaders-2021-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/stress-effect-on-aging-healt...
- medvezhenok 5y ago
  > Being a CEO is one of the highest impact careers in terms of lowering life expectancy. Most high paid careers are extremely stressful and come with more serious health impact than the average worker. Perhaps, though that effect must be offset by other things (and/or access to healthcare), since the life expectancy based on income graph is monotonically increasing for both genders. http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/ http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/ My hunch is that the well off might have stress on the job (though again, this is a subset of well-paid positions, and I think the subset is actually smaller than you think), but everyone else has a lot more stress outside of the job which is much more important. The stress associated with poverty cannot be understated - it lowers IQ by ~15 points. (Poverty and IQ: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-how-poverty-can-drive-down-intelligence https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-h...)
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Middle managers are more stressed than CEO's. Responsibilities cause stress, but power to address those responsibilities mitigates it somewhat. CEO's have much more of that power than middle managers do. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/middle-managers-are-miserable-.aspx https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-re...