Some estimates for income elasticities of leisure activities in the United States

The empirical classification of leisure activities into luxuries, necessities, or inferior activities is useful for predicting the impact of economic development or life-cycle variations in wages on the organization of people’s leisure. We take a step in that direction. We present theoretical underpinnings to the investigation of leisure-income responses and conduct an empirical examination of four broad activities using a recently collected cross-section of observations on time use in the US. Findings suggest that consumers endowed with more income opt to improve the quality of their leisure activities but not to increase (or increase only slightly) the time spent on them. A positive, direct effect of education on active leisure stemming mainly from men’s behavior is also found