Policy, Not Growth, Determines How Much the World Works, Global Study Finds

Getting richer does not mean working less, according to a new global study covering 160 countries and 97 per cent of the world's population.

The research, led by economists Amory Gethin and Emmanuel Saez, found no evidence that working hours fall for people of prime working age as economies develop. Instead, the study points to a different explanation entirely: government policy on schooling, pensions and labour regulation.

What 86 Countries' Data Actually Shows

Gethin, a researcher at the World Bank, and Saez, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, built what they describe as the most detailed database of working hours ever assembled. It draws on labour force surveys compiled by the International Labour Organization and the World Bank, spanning more than two decades of data in 86 countries.

Their findings are detailed in an NBER working paper. Globally, 59 per cent of adults aged 15 and over are employed, working an average of 43 hours a week once in a job. That works out to roughly 25 hours a week across the whole adult population, employed or not.

Crucially, the relationship between income and hours worked is weak. Some of the shortest working weeks are found in France, South Africa and Afghanistan, while some of the longest are in Madagascar, Vietnam and China, countries at very different stages of development.

Schools and Pensions, Not Pay Packets

The pattern becomes clearer when broken down by age. Hours worked by teenagers and by adults over 60 fall sharply as countries develop, but the researchers found this has little to do with rising incomes.

For younger people, it is expanding school enrolment that pulls them out of work. For older adults, it is the rollout of public pension systems that allows people to retire without losing most of their income.

Once schooling rates and pension coverage are factored in, national income itself stops predicting how much the young and the old work. It is the policy, not the pay cheque, doing the work.

The Global Gender Shift Beneath the Surface

Among adults aged 20 to 59, the picture is different again. Total hours worked in this age group have stayed remarkably stable over long stretches of history, including in the United States, where average prime-age hours were roughly 30 a week in 1900, close to today's figure.

But beneath that stability sits a major shift. As countries develop, men's hours fall while women's paid working hours rise, and in many regions the two changes cancel each other out almost exactly. Across the world, the data shows men supply 65 per cent of working hours to women's 35 per cent.

The study also examined taxation. Higher labour taxes are linked to fewer hours worked on the surface, but that link weakens once regulation and formal employment coverage are taken into account, and largely disappears when working-hours limits and overtime rules are factored in. The researchers conclude that stronger regulation, not tax rates alone, explains why high-tax European economies tend to log fewer hours than the United States.

The findings challenge a long-standing assumption in economics that working hours are mainly a matter of individual choice, shaped by pay and preference. Economist John Maynard Keynes famously predicted in 1930 that growing prosperity would deliver a 15-hour working week by now.

Instead, Gethin and Saez argue that how much a country works is a collective decision, built into its schools, pension systems and labour law, rather than an automatic by-product of getting richer. For policymakers weighing decisions on retirement age, school leaving age or working-time regulation, the research suggests those choices carry more weight over national working patterns than economic growth itself.