Fascinating statistics. I wish the charts had been designed in a way that made it easier to compare the numbers: for instance, I want to visually compare the number of hours that each country spends sleeping, but these charts force me to read the numbers instead of interpreting the graphics.
Better, but still hard to read, I think. If I want to compare the green bars for two countries, they don't sit side by side, because the sections under them are of varying heights.
Agreed --- looks like the rankings of the variables are the same for each country, and even the ratios vary only slightly. This information would be better presented in a table (with standard error reported) or a bar graph. The original OECD[1] report presents this information much more lucidly. When The Economist filtered the OED report, they should have paid more attention to clarity of presentation.
I can't support this enough. The economist's summary had me just saying "so what", but after reading this comment I started looking at the actual report and I must say it is much much more interesting.
Yes definitely. But in this case just looking at the Economist's summary, I didn't even feel it was interesting or worthwhile to look at the primary source.
They all look mostly the same, sure the French spend nearly double the time on "Personal Care" as Americans but when you're talking about 0.7 hours vs. 1.3 hours that's really not a big difference. I'd be a lot more interested in countries like Russia, China, and various places in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. More precise age groups would also be interesting.
I think the number on "Paid work and study" had quite significant differences (Japan 6.3, Germany 3.9 (which is less than France and surprisingly low)) and was very interesting.
But I definitely agree that numbers from a more diverse country sample could be very interesting.
"I think the number on "Paid work and study" had quite significant differences"
It could simply mean that in Japan a higher percentage of people have paid work compared to the other countries, like children work earlier, old people die sooner after employment ends (in France many retire in their 50s), higher percentage of employed women, less unemployment etc. pp.
Germany has (or had) a system where you could work 3 days and get paid for 3.5 days. The government chipped in the extra, I believe.
I think the idea was to encourage more part-time workers so the unemployment rate would drop. And for a couple intending to have a single member working, it would encourage both to work part-time instead.
More seriously, I can imagine it includes travel to work, which tends to be an epic journey through traffic jams in densely populated countries like Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands.
Then again, my experience of living both in the US and Germany is that driving plays by far a greater role in the US. Most places are 20-45 min away. In Germany, things like grocery stores, theaters, schools or restaurants tend to be closer to residential areas.
