Asians Work As The Turks Play

The new OECD Society at a Glance report shows that men in Asia do more hours of paid work than their counterparts in other regions of the world. Paid work hours in China, Japan, and Korea are among the longest in the world’s developed and developing nations. Turkish men do much less paid work than men in other countries do. Australians and New Zealanders hardly work at all.

The research may offer some concrete evidence about why the major Asian nations have done well economically over the last thirty or forty years, and why China and South Korea continue to do so. Beyond that, the research results yield few additional insights.

The men who do the least paid work tend to be those who live in the old nations of Europe. It is simple to argue this is a cause of their budget problems. Citizens of France do less paid work than men in most countries. But, so do the Swedes. Sweden will have a budget surplus this year, and most of the countries in southern Europe will not. What is the explanation? There does not seem to be one.

While the results from Asia probably show that hard, paid work helps the national interest, it doesn’t do much to improve the lives of the average citizen. If the citizens of China knew how well the Turk have it, they might strike for shorter hours.

One observation about the data that is hard to dispute is people work harder in totalitarian states. China may be the best example of that, and, at least in part, it is the case in South Korea. On the other side are countries like Australia where people prize their independence. The Australian government does well financially, so an examination of work hours and how they relate to the country’s fiscal success bears little fruit.

But,  modest paid work effort often comes with a cost. Paid work time in Ireland is hardly impressive, and that may be one reason it has had to beg for money. Someone has to work if productivity is to stay high. And, high productivity may not be the key to a financially successful central government, but the OECD data shows that they are related in many cases. Hard work may not be its own reward, but it tends to favor national financial interests.

Douglas A. McIntyre