ABSTRACT
MosT working-age Americans and Britons spend nearly half of their waking hours on the job or commuting to it. Thus it is not difficult to make the case that working conditions call for separate treatment in this book, which is primarily focused on consumption. Pay and hours of work, nonpecuniary rewards and dissatisfactions, and distinctive workplace hazards affect the worker's well-being quite as directly as does the consumption of goods and services outside of the workplace. Indeed, to a large extent they shape these consumption patterns and influence one's feelings of well-being off the job as well as on it.l
In focusing on the work environment, this chapter introduces some considerations beyond the consumption realm, but the discussion deals only with work in the market-omitting housework, do-it-yourself activities, hobbies, and other creative uses of leisure that could also be performed for pay in the marketplace. What follows should be regarded more as an agenda for inquiry and discussion than as a systematic analysis. The data are primarily from the United States, but the issues are also of concern in other countries as well. Most of the considerations also apply to the quality of working life among all employees, not just those who work or live in metropolitan areas, but it is among urban workers that the questions treated here have attracted greatest attention.
