We study the impact of entertainment technology on labor supply. Using Social Security work histories and a natural experiment arising from the regulated US rollout of television, we estimate that a station launch reduced the probability of working by around 0.3 percentage points, driven mainly by an increase in older-age-group retirement rates. The results support the hypothesis that television?s rise contributed to the midcentury transition of retirement from a necessity to "golden years" of enjoyment. Our findings indicate that entertainment innovations have a less pronounced effect on overall labor supply trends than model calibrations in the previous literature suggest.

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1 October 2025

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American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 17(4) , pp.1?28, 2025

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DOI: 10.1257/app.20230377

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20230377

This Journal article is published under the centre's Labour programme.