TIME FOR LIFE: The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time.

By John P. Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey. Pennsylvania State University Press. 367 pp. $24.95

"For the first time since his creation, man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem, how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure... [and how] to live agreeably and wisely and well." John Maynard Keynes was right, according to Robinson, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, and Godbey, a professor of leisure studies at Pennsylvania State University. In this study of what Americans do all day, the authors conclude that, yes, economic growth and productivity have won for us the leisure that Lord Keynes prophesied in 1928.

But what are the trends in how Americans use their time? We are spending more time visiting art museums, doing needlework, participating in sports, pursuing hobbies, and (above all) watching television—at the expense of caring for children, visiting parks, socializing, reading, exercising, and working. Of all the trends the authors reveal in the period they study (1965–85), the most controversial is the last. Robinson and Godbey are in the minority when they argue that the American work week has shrunk by five hours in 20 years. Other scholars, such as Juliet Schor, Arlie Hochschild, and this reviewer, have pointed to longer working hours and correspondingly fewer leisure hours.

Social science theory is sufficiently flexible to have it either way. Do the higher wages that accompany economic development coax workers to raise their incomes by spending more hours on the job? Or do rising wages encourage workers to enjoy greater leisure without sacrificing income? When theory predicts diametrically opposed outcomes such as these, only an empirical solution will reveal the truth. Now the fun begins.

Armed with what they refer to as "controversial ideas in all of their quantitative splendor and detail," the authors try to disprove the claim that Americans are working longer, not shorter, hours. The difference turns on the authors’ methodology. While other researchers have relied on published statistics and surveys that ask their informants to recall numbers of hours worked in an earlier period, Robinson and Godbey rely on data obtained from respondents who keep time budgets of activities as they unfold. This data collection method, they maintain, avoids the errors inherent in recalled information.

So far, so good. Yet the authors show a troubling carelessness when it comes to handling even the most straightforward information. For example, they challenge the "questionable belief" held by other researchers that Americans are spending less time reading. Yet their own data reveal that time spent reading dropped by 48 minutes per week—a change considered significant in studies of this kind. Similarly, the authors argue that there has not been a trend away from organized religious activities. Yet their data for matched samples of respondents show a 10 percent decline in time spent in such activities. If these conclusions can be checked against the authors’ own published data, one wonders about the accuracy of those conclusions that cannot.

—Lee Burns