Only So Many Hours in a Day: Time Constraints, Labour Pools and Demand for Consumer Services

Some sociological sources of increasing demand for consumer services are discussed in this article. Contrary to J. Gershuny's theory of ‘self-service: jobs in these industries are still growing, despite productivity improvements, due to increasing house-hold demand generated by constraints placed on time by both paid and unpaid production and insufficient pools of household labour upon which to draw. Social trends with these effects include increasing female labour force participation and longevity, declining household size, later age at marriage, political struggles over state provision, and factors internal to the state itself.