Overall, the average combined number of hours that couples spend on the job has increased from 53 hours to 63 hours in the past 30 years, according to Gerson and Jacobs. That has resulted in greater pressure on both husbands and wives to complete the household tasks once done by stay-at-home wives, creating the time deficit, the researchers assert.
Other changes in family structure have contributed to the time pressures Americans face. Census Bureau data showed that women headed one-fifth of all families in 2000, twice the share as in of 1970. So even though their average workweek remained unchanged at 39 hours, the lack of child care and other support services has left them pressed for time.
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"Even if the length of the workweek had not changed at all, the rise of families that depend on either two incomes or one parent would suffice to explain why Americans feel so pressed for time," Gerson and Jacobs concluded.
The Wal-Mart Effect
To some civic leaders, Wal-Mart is the economic equivalent of the Grim Reaper, killing small and medium-size retail stores and sending more people into the jobless ranks than it hires. But a more comforting view is offered by economist Emek Basker of the University of Missouri, who examined employment data collected by the federal government since 1977 in more than 1,700 counties where a Wal-Mart had opened.
Basker found that the chain created slightly more jobs than it destroyed. Opening a Wal-Mart immediately increased overall countywide employment by about 100 jobs, controlling for other factors associated with job gains and losses, he asserts in a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Five years later, about half of this gain is erased as other retail businesses close while employment in other sectors roughly holds steady or increases slightly, leaving a statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs, Basker found. The so-called "big box" retailer currently operates more than 3,000 stores in the United States and plans to open hundreds more in the next decade.
"The small magnitude of the estimated effect of Wal-Mart on retail employment is striking in light of the level of public discussion on this topic," Basker concluded, adding that the retailing company's practices could have other negative effects, such as on the local tax base or the environment.
morinr@washpost.com
