April 23, 2014
The NYT had a very interesting piece in its Upshot section that showed the trends in after-tax per capita income at each decile cutoff in the United States, alongside the trends in several other wealthy countries. It showed that the United States was at or near the top at every decile cutoff in 1980. However, it had fallen back sharply in the bottom five deciles. It ranked first in per capita income for the top five deciles with the gap between the United States and other countries growing further up the income ladder. In short, the rich are getting much richer in the United States and they are doing so in a way that is out of line with the patterns in other wealthy countries.
While this is not a pretty picture to those who would like to see everyone benefiting from growth, the actual story is even worse than shown in the NYT piece. Most of the countries in the analysis have seen a sharp reduction in the length of the average work year since 1980, the United States has not. For example, in France the length of the average work year was shortened by 17.6 percent between 1980 and 2012, the most recent year for which data is available. In Canada the reduction in the length of the average work year was 6.4 percent over this period, in the Netherlands it was 9.6 percent, and in Finland 11.1 percent. By comparison, the average work year shrank by just 1.3 percent in the United States.
This shrinking of the average work year corresponds to the increase in vacation time in other countries, with workers in many countries now enjoying 5-6 weeks a year of paid vacation. Workers in other wealthy countries can also count on paid sick days and paid family leave when they have children or a sick family member in need of care.
These guarantees and additional leisure translate into real improvements in living standards in which workers in the United States largely did not share. In 1980 workers in the United States worked somewhat less than the average for OECD countries. In 2012, they worked somewhat more.
The NYT piece emphasized that low and moderate income workers in other countries now typically have more after-tax income than their counterparts in the United States. However they also have an institutional structure that allow them to better manage the demands of work and family. And, they enjoy more leisure.
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