Birth rate

• BEIJING, Feb. 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- iHuman Inc. (NYSE: IH) ("iHuman" or the "Company"), a leading provider of tech-powered, intellectual development products in China, today announced its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2023.
• It also earned YouTube's Silver Creator Award and rose to rank among the top three most popular children's apps on the U.S. Apple app store in the fourth quarter.
• Ms. Vivien Weiwei Wang, Director and Chief Financial Officer of iHuman, added, "Our fourth quarter results ended 2023 on a positive note despite a turbulent global economic environment.
• While our fourth quarter results saw a marginal decrease year-over-year, it reflected a normalization from the exceptional fourth quarter performance last year, which was caused by a heightened demand driven by more indoor activities during the pandemic.

• So why are people still working so hard for so long?
• Output per worker increased by almost 300% between 1950 and 2018 in the U.S.
• But shouldn’t more productive work be rewarded with more time free from work?

Keynes misses the mark

• However, in the past, many economists assumed that people’s need for more stuff would eventually be met.
• In fact, one of the most famous economists of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, confidently predicted in 1930 that within a century, the normal workweek would decrease to 15 hours.
• Yet Americans in their prime working age are still on the job 41.7 hours per week.

• Why was Keynes wrong?
• Obviously, people’s needs or wants were not fully met.
• In a consumption-saturated society, time spent neither producing nor consuming goods increasingly appeared as wasted time.

Forced labor

• Some jobs are more precarious than others, and many workers even forego earned vacation time for fear of losing promotions.
• Rather, it’s the result of a hard-fought political battle that culminated in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the standard 40-hour workweek, along with a minimum wage.
• Pressed by a labor movement that was far more powerful than today’s, the government implemented a range of progressive economic policies during the 1930s to help the nation emerge from the Great Depression.
• Labor leaders had initially proposed a 30-hour week, which government officials resoundingly rejected.

• They might be working long hours, but they could afford television sets, cars and homes in the suburbs.
• Many families could live on the wages of the full-time work of the father, making the 40-hour week seem reasonable, since the mother had time to care for the family and home.
• It’s almost as if the 40-hour week has been replaced by an 80-hour week – at least in terms of hours worked per household.

Separating economic growth from well-being

• Most Americans will not abandon their work ethic and their insistence that most people work.
• It doesn’t help that elected leaders continue to insist that well-being be measured mostly by economic growth, and when the U.S. media breathlessly reports quarterly economic growth data, with increases deemed “good” and decreases deemed “bad.” Why shouldn’t free time and its benefits be included in the equation?
• Why aren’t figures on the social costs of unlimited growth publicized?
• Does it even matter that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has doubled in less than a decade when economic security is so fragile and so many people are overstressed?

Gary Cross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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