Tyler Cowen’s European Vacation
Discussing the contrasting vacation models of the United States (little vacation) and Europe (lots of vacation), Tyler Cowen sees a tight link to family size with the European approach fitting well with smaller families. Maybe so, but I have some doubts that there’s an actual causal relationship here. There’s quite a lot of variation between OECD countries in terms of paid leave policies. This is the mandatory number of paid vacation days in different countries (the United States is zero):
Leading the pack are Finland, France, Norway, and Sweden all of whom have birth rates that exceed the European Union average. In general, if you compare the United States to Europe you see a more statist economic model on the other side of the Atlantic going with lower birthrates. But if you look within Europe you see more statist economic models going along side the higher birthrates in France and northern Europe, while the relative-less-statist economies of southern and eastern Europe are associated with very low birthrates.
Personally, I’m more a fan of policies to introduce paid family leave than to mandate paid vacations (as I’ve said before, there’s really no such thing as a paid vacation).
34 Responses to “Tyler Cowen’s European Vacation”
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August 3rd, 2009 at 10:09 am
This is the mandatory number of paid vacation days in different countries (the United States is zero)
And as we all know, if it’s not made mandatory by the government, it doesn’t happen. That is why no one in the U.S. gets any paid vacation days, or makes more than the minimum wage for that matter.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 am
I think mandatory vacation is fairly stupid. Even three day holidays like labor day are not clearly beneficial. Wouldn’t we be better off if we could choose for ourselves which days we went on vacation? McCain got some flack for opposing MLK day and he even claimed later that he regretted the vote, but he probably was right.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:24 am
Craig, I think you’re confusing Federal holidays with vacation; either that or you’re against some or all Federal holidays.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:30 am
Europe again? Is there nothing to learn from South Korea or Japan for example?
(not on birth rates or vacations, but in general)
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:33 am
Well ostap has shown he can’t actually read charts, but hey if ignores the evidence right in front of him it doesn’t exist right?
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:39 am
I can’t believe a supposed to be liberal like you is analyzing labour rights in a pure economical/monetary fashion instead of terms of labour market regulation, and therefore in terms of workers’ rights, a way to protect them of abuses that any company(and capitalist market in a wide sense) is trying to do to its labour force in absence of regulations.
The idea behind medical leaves, paid holidays, etc…is to give people time to recover of illneses, time to spend with their kids, etc…TIME TO HAVE A LIFE BECAUSE WE DESERVE IT AS HUMAN BEINGS.
Remember why in the rest of the world we stop working to remember the Haymarket massacre???
And if everybody does it at the same time, because regulations force them to do, then nobody loose, the production output will be shared for the same amount of people, the bargaining power of workers would be the same, etc…
And it’s even a good thing for the common good and the economy as a whole. Thanks to paid annual leaves and paid holidays, Europe has a much bigger tourism industry and companies hire proportionally more people for the same amount of work, and there is even more safety at work, since workers are not that tired and avoid accidents or don’t work injured as you do in America (WTF is working with a cast in your leg instead of staying at home to recover and getting still paid???)
I’m so glad to have been born in an old catholic country, where people barely go to church but still refuses to lose their traditional paid holidays dedicated to random Saints and Virgins.
(I’m from Spain, notice as welll Portugal and Italy and you’ll see what I’m talking about)
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:46 am
Small business and puppy killer! Tyler Cowen wants to take away Fido and shut down the local kennel.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:49 am
Back in the 70’s the United States took great pride in the amount of leisure time enjoyed by its citizens. I remember thinking as a kid “what a great country I live in. We Americans are so strong and prosperous we can kick back and relax more than anyone on earth.”
But as I got older, I realized we were a nation of lazy people. It is much better now. Adjustments have been made. Americans now work themselves to the bone, when they can get job. We are rapidly becoming a nation of dirt poor but honorable peasants. Tolstoy would be proud. And so am I.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:06 am
If Obama introduced minimum mandatory paid vacation similar to EU levels he would not only be doing te citizens of the country a huge favour he would also guarantee re-election. It makes both moral and political sense.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:07 am
It seems like Tyler Cowen just doesn’t believe in causal relationships, period, except when it amuses him.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:07 am
Your statistics are outdated. In Denmark the number of vacation days is 25 (with one additional week of “care” days), so the effective number is 30.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:08 am
I sometimes see politicians, usually Republicans, attempt to flatter their audience by saying that Americans are the hardest-working people in the world.
Um…is that supposed to be a good thing?
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:14 am
I believe that the differences withing Europe may be due in part to whether the government counts immigrants, for examples Turks in Germany, or Algerians in France, as citizens. No for the first and yes for the second. That could account for the entire difference in childbearing rates.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
If you work in the B2B environment, you most likely have a decent PTO plan that allows you to take ample vacation….unless you get really sick of course, and that’s where the problem is as I see it.
The reason companies began lumping in sick days with vacation days (a PTO day is a PTO day regardless the reason) is to prevent employees from abusing the system, and to streamline administration (HR loves it). In my mind, these reasons just are lame (although I’m all for streamlined).
PTO forces people to come to work when they’re sick (rather be under the weather at work than skip my next vacation). Companies report the opposite, according to several “studies” I’ve read. They believe illnesses drop by as much by 50% when they implement PTO. If you think about that for more than ten seconds you realize how ridiculous that conclusion is.
It really comes down to the U.S. just sucks as a place to live and work if you become ill or someone in your family gets ill. Per usual.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 am
This idea of a causal link between lots of kids/pets and no vacation seems absurd. Empirical evidence aside, there is no plausble theory behind it.
If anything, having kids and caring for them should motivate people to have a lot of time off. I don’t see how having kids and loving them would, ceteris paribus, motivate you to rather be at work than at home or a summer house or Disney World or wherever with your kids. Those without families can spend their lives at work, but those with kids need vacation.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
Can someone explain this graph? I see 21 countries listed and only 20 bars — is the US even on there? Or is our figure 0?
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 am
Rachel M.
I believe we are tied with Japan at 10 paid vacation days.
We used to laugh at Japan back in the 70’s because they worked 24/7 365 trying to catch up to us. They caught up, apparently.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
The U.S. is on the graph. Its bar has zero height, because there is no mandate for paid vacation days in the U.S..
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
The chart is out of date. In the UK public holidays are now also mandatory paid holidays, that’s another eight days!
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
AVS: “If Obama introduced minimum mandatory paid vacation similar to EU levels he would not only be doing te citizens of the country a huge favour he would also guarantee re-election. It makes both moral and political sense.”
If the government mandated vacation, employers would compensate by paying people less because to get the same output more people would need to be on payroll. For the wealthy, this may be welfare-improving, but for people just scraping by, this would have an adverse effect.
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Re: McCain got some flack for opposing MLK day and he even claimed later that he regretted the vote, but he probably was right.
No, America needs MLK day as a symbol of racial reconciliation. We can’t do away with it. Unless we rename it “Racial Reconciliation Day” or “Civil Rights Day” or something.
I would be happy to do away with some other federal holidays though. Personally I’d rather celebrate Ascension Thursday then the Fourth of July, as the Ascension is simply more meaningful.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Columbus fed slaves to his dogs because they were hungry. We should have a Columbus Day, in honor of the great man.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
@18 Jason L “The U.S. is on the graph. Its bar has zero height, because there is no mandate for paid vacation days in the U.S.”
I stand corrected, Rachel M.. Apparently the Japanese moved on past us some time ago and have been kicking back and tripping the light fantastic.
Today, the United States is the low man. The lowest of the low. In some circles this is an honorable place. It means endless grinding work for ever decreasing pay but the unrealized dreams, they just keep getting better and better.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
One theory worth considering is that maybe having more vacation, more time to get away to a romantic beach with your beloved and really, really relax and enjoy yourselves might, over time, lead to larger family sizes.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Its easierto take an existing system and just adapt it instead of starting something from scratch (that’s why its stupid to design a new health care system, when Medicare works just fine, but I digress).
Instead of looking at Europe, look at Washington, DC (that’s right, Matt– look out your window). Whatever benefits or holidays that the federal government gives its employees, that should be the goal (or mandate) for private sector employers. It’d be like how the Americans With Disabilities Act didn’t start from scratch. It simply applied to the private employers the rules and policies that the Rehabilitation Act had applied to the federal workplace for 20 years.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Oh, as for how many days off federal employees get–
13 days sick leave each year; 13, 20, or 26 days of vacation leave each year, depending on years of service; 10 days paid holiday each year.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/governmentjobs/a/empbenefits.htm
There’s a pending bill that’d grant federal employees a right to 4 weeks paid family leave.
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
No one with any brains worries about vacation days. If you don’t get out of bed wanting to go to work and do something interesting then you need a new job.
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Sweden is wrongly listed as having no paid holidays but even thou we are all atheists we still insist on being paid for enjoying:
Christmas Eve, Xmas day and Third Day of Xmas- if you’re lucky they’re all on weekdays.
New Years Day
Easter: Friday, Sat, Sun, Monday
The Day when Jesus flew back – Kristi Himmels fard -always a Thursday so you get 4 days for one vacation day trown in.
The Day when his peeps later learned languages – Pingst,pentekoste.
And of course: Midsummer Day – the big party day. The blot.
one of the above day can’t remember which, was substituted for a new day off – The Swedish National Day (June 6th) just the other year. We never really cared for that day before…
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Most workers in the US do get paid holidays and paid vacation (albeit not very much of either) so showing the US at 0 is wrong. It would be more correct to take an average over the whole workforce.
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
[...] Addendum: Matt Yglesias makes some interesting points. [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Between Max424 and the non-Americans explaining how those minority of us with a job are killing ourselves (literally) to earn peasant pay, and how the U.S. is a terrible place to work if you get sick, I wonder if I’m even living in the same country. I’ve been through a cancer and neurological problems (including many expenses not covered by insurance, or which are large enough that uncovered expenses are significant), I work in a field with a glut of people for every job, and while I’d certainly like more vacation the situation these people describe is simply foreign to me, and I can’t say that I can think of more than a handful of people I have ever known (in a variety of fields from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds) who really fit this portrayal, either. Obviously it is the with many people in absolute terms, but it is hardly the norm as is described here.
It’s not as though it actually matters at this point, though. In Asia they seem more than happy to work their fingers to the bone in *truly* poor work and social welfare conditions, and soon enough I suspect many Europeans and Americans will look back with regret on the days when they had the opportunity to work hard.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Finite time. Infinite money.
Advice: go with the time as a component of your compensation.
August 4th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
That the high-vacation Nordic countries have the highest birthrates isn’t a coincidence. Southern European familistic politics, which try to incentivize women to stay in the home, have perverse incentives: families face nasty tradeoffs between having more kids and having more income. Feminist Scandanavia starts with the premise that it shouldn’t be any harder to be a mother and a worker than a father and a worker – vacation and care days are a part of this – and so has higher birthrates.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:11 am
What Ostap was pointing out is that in the US, we don’t rely on the government to determine how many (or which) days are for PTO. This chart is useless unless its purpose is to point out just how much freedom still exists in the US. For almost any purpose, the number of ACTUAL days available is the number wanted, not the number set by some functionary.
I’ve not worked a job with less than two weeks vacation (+holidays) in more than twenty years.