Starry sky circle

How we spend time

How does our identity determine how we use our time? Economist Daniel Hamermesh will discuss the role of income inequality and how it affects the things we buy and do. He presents a radical proposal to reassess what we value with our time.

Which country works the most; what are the trends and consequences of this? How many hours do people spend watching TV?  

Time is the ultimate scarce resource, which makes it the perfect topic for economics. We're limited by the number of hours, days and years in our lives; so what we choose to spend our time on – and why we do so – offers intriguing insights. 

Daniel draws on his latest book, Spending Time, to reveal some surprising conclusions about how our country, culture, class, ethnicity and gender shape how we use our time, and provide similarities and differences across people of all backgrounds.

This event is co-presented with the School of Economics

The speaker

Daniel is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the Society of Labor Economists, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and Past President of the Society of Labor Economists and of the Midwest Economics Association. He is the author of books including Labor Demand (1993), Beauty Pays (2011) and Spending Time (2019). 

He has been awarded the biennial Mincer Award for Lifetime Contributions to Labor Economics of the Society of Labor Economists; the annual IZA Prize in Labor of the Institute for the Study of Labor; and the biennial John R. Commons Award of the international economics honor society OΔE. His undergraduate teaching, particularly of large classes in introductory economics, has gained him several University-wide teaching awards.

Deborah is Professor of Economics at the University of Sydney. She is Director of the Program in Gender and Families at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany; a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course; and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Event image: Photo by Michael Hull on Unsplash

Sign up for our newsletter

Each month we'll send you details about upcoming events, and a selection of podcasts.