Time Poverty Fact Sheet

More Work

•  Americans work an average of nine full weeks (350 hours) more per year than their European counterparts.

•  Since the 1980s, work hours have risen steadily by about half a percent per year. This increase is produced by a combination of growth in weekly hours (about a tenth of a percentage point a year) and an increase in the number of days and weeks worked each year.

•  Eighty percent of men and 62% of women put in more than 40 hours a week on the job. Americans work longer hours than medieval peasants did. Nearly one in five workers now spends more than 50 hours per week at work.

Less Play

•  Studies have shown that men who took an annual vacation reduced the risk of heart attack by 30% while frequent vacations cut women’s risk of death from heart disease in half.

•  The United States is the only country in the industrialized world without a law guaranteeing paid vacation time.

•  Americans have by far the shortest paid vacations in the industrialized world. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans average 8.1 days of vacation after the first year on the job and 10.2 days after three years. In contrast, workers in France and Australia get four to five weeks of paid leave by law each year and six or more by collective agreement.

•  Twenty-six percent of American workers don’t take any vacation at all.

The Toll on Families & Kids

•  The University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center has uncovered a 28% drop in the number of families taking vacations.

• A 2004 Gallop poll released showed that only 28% of American families with children eat together seven nights a week, a 10% drop from three years ago. In contrast, Gallop found that 40% of Canadian families and 38% of families in Great Britain eat together seven nights a week. The poll also showed that the percentage American families who eat together at least four nights week—75%—is falling steadily. This figure was 79% in 2001 and 83% in 1997.

•  A study in 2004 by University of Minnesota researchers found that teens who ate five or six meals a week with their families were 7 percent to 24 percent less likely to smoke cigarettes or marijuana, drink alcohol, get lower grades, show signs of depression or think about or attempt suicide than teens who had three to four family meals. The more meals the teens ate with families, the less likely they were to have these problems. 

•  Since the late 1970s, children have lost 12 hours per week in free time, including a 25% drop in play overall including a 50% drop in unstructured outdoor activities, according to a national survey by the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center. The Survey Research Center also found that students spend eight hours more a week in school than kids did 20 years ago, and homework time has nearly doubled.

• The National Sleep Foundation says students need nine hours of sleep to be completely energized and ready for school. Yet only 15% of adolescents get the sleep they need. A typical teen gets only between 7 and 7 1/2 hours per night and often less.

•  Up to 25 percent of children now suffer from sleep problems, according to the Sleep Disorders Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

•  Before TVs, DVDs and video games, children spent most of their free time playing outside in unstructured activities. Now, a 2005 survey of moms conducted on behalf of Neosporin^® found that less than a quarter of kids play outdoors most of the time. Just 34% of mothers polled reported that the activities most often engaged in by their child included unstructured outdoor play. The moms surveyed also reported that their own busy schedules make it a challenge to organize outdoor activities for their children.

 •  Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, professor of child psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, tested 120 preschool kids, half of whom went to nursery schools that stressed social interaction and a playful approach to learning while the other half went to nursery schools that rushed them towards academic achievement. The children from the more relaxed, slower environment turned out less anxious, more eager to learn and better able to think independently. (From In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore, HarperCollins, 2004.)

(Unless another source is indicated, statistics are from Take Back Your Time, John de Graaf, ed., Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2002.)   

CONTACT:  Carol Savage – 978-887-5419 or Jeanne Yocum – 413-467-9470