The long decline of night work

Plus: cheaper housing could slow population drops, Europe’s east–west political split, and more

Welcome to The Update. In today’s issue:

• The long decline of night work

• Cheaper housing could slow the fall in population

• Europe’s conservative interior and left-leaning west coast

• New issue of Works in Progress

• South Korea’s older workers show that Europeans could retire later

• In brief: using reason to find a partner, American buildup around Iran, and more

The long decline of night work

Since the Industrial Revolution, our jobs have gradually improved, becoming better paid, more interesting, and less dangerous. Economists Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh detail another aspect of this development: that fewer and fewer Americans are working in the evenings and at night. Of course, daytime work was always the norm.

But it has grown stronger with time.

These estimates are based on surveys of when people usually start and end work. From 2003 onward, the paper instead relies on time diaries, asking workers what they did at each hour of a particular day. The two methods produce different numbers but show a similar trend over time.

Together, these studies suggest that the share of Americans working in the middle of the night has fallen by more than 50 percent since the 1970s.

When I came across this paper, my first guess was that the fall in night work might be driven by the decline of manufacturing (where shift work is common) and the continued rise of white-collar office jobs (where it isn’t). But Biddle and Hamermesh show that changes in job types have not contributed much to the fall in night work. People work less at night across all major industries, with the exception of retail, where changes in logistics and longer opening hours have led to more evening and night work.

Instead, the key explanation is simply that Americans have become richer. Today’s workers can afford to avoid night work to an extent that previous generations couldn’t. Even though employers have raised premiums for night work, the number of workers who are willing to do it keeps falling. The decline of night work is another unheralded benefit of economic growth.

Cheaper housing could slow the fall in population

In many countries, high housing costs lower fertility rates. But if the population declines, shouldn’t this eventually reduce housing costs as demand falls? And couldn’t that in turn increase fertility rates?

Economist Nicholas Decker argues that it could, and that standard population projections ignore this feedback cycle. He estimates that taking it into account raises the projected American population in 2100 by five to ten percent relative to a baseline model from the Census Bureau. Obviously, this figure is hugely uncertain, but so are existing population projections.

Europe’s conservative interior and left-leaning west coast

What are the geographical patterns of European party politics? Here’s a map of the political color of prime ministers or presidents (depending on who’s more influential) in the EU and adjacent European countries. This measure is admittedly imperfect – the three categories are coarse-grained, and many governments are multi-party coalitions – but even so, it reveals an interesting pattern. While the Atlantic seaboard mostly has centrist or left-wing leaders, conservatives dominate further east.

* The prime minister in most countries, the president in France, Serbia, and Cyprus. The categorization is broadly based on European party affiliation, but involves several judgment calls.

New issue of Works in Progress

Issue 22 of Works in Progress is out, with nine articles on a wide range of themes. Michael Hill writes about how Communist countries struggled to reform their economies. Marx wasn’t much concerned with wealth creation, as he thought that Communist revolutions would take place in rich countries such as Britain, where he lived. But in fact, the countries that turned Communist were all poor and desperately needed economic growth. Sadly, their policies instead led to stagnation, and attempts to change course repeatedly failed.

Part of the problem was that since artificially low prices had become communist dogma, reforms typically led to price increases, which people never like. Also, many reformers simply didn’t know how the economic system worked, due to the dire state of communist economics and autocratic secrecy. In 1983, Mikhail Gorbachev was refused access to the state budget, even though he was a member of the Politburo. As Michael explains, this lack of knowledge may have contributed to the runaway inflation under Gorbachev’s leadership (1985–1991).

Elsewhere, Olympia Campbell describes the enormous variation in human marriage customs, and Alex Wakeman tells us how wild cabbages gave rise to dozens of vegetables.

I’ve covered the other articles previously:

• Europe is held back by rigid employment protection

• Why are humans so long-lived, and how can we live even longer?

• How cities were transformed in the nineteenth century

• The rising cost of American water

• American buses have too many stops

• Vaccine development has accelerated

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South Korea’s older workers show that Europeans could retire later

Even though people in rich countries have been retiring later since the turn of the millennium, I think retirement ages should rise further. While some argue that older people simply can’t work longer, the fact that South Koreans over 65 are ten times more likely to work than their peers in France suggests otherwise. Early retirement is not the physical necessity it is often claimed to be.

In brief

• Aria Schrecker makes the case for using reason rather than intuition to find a partner

• The Supreme Court blocks most of Trump’s tariffs

  • Trump reacts by saying he’ll raise the worldwide tariff to 15 percent

• American air power buildup around Iran rivals the Iraq War

• American annualized Q4 growth was 1.4 percent, below expectations

• Rob Wiblin interviews Ajeya Cotra on using AI to make AI safe

• Claims that public disorder is rising in the US are overstated

• The number of people overseeing Waymos remotely is very small

• What Coefficient Giving’s Abundance and Growth Team is reading

• Roots of Progress link roundup

That’s all for today. If you like The Update, please subscribe – it’s free.