Younger generation favours material values again

There are signs of a clear change in the younger generation's attitude towards leisure time. Just four years ago, 51 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds were prepared to sacrifice income in exchange for more leisure time. Today, only 43 per cent of this age group are satisfied with more free time and less income. This is the result of a new representative survey of 2,000 people throughout Germany conducted by the BAT Leisure Research Institute.
A comparison of the years 1982 and 1986 shows that more leisure time is worth less and less without more money. Almost two thirds of Germans (63 %) reject the option of „earning less but having more leisure time“. The 60 to 69-year-olds (72 %) show particularly strong reservations, as do those living in rural areas (73 %).
„The fear of unemployment and stagnating real incomes have left their mark on people,“ says Professor Dr Horst W. Opaschowski, Director of the BAT Leisure Research Institute. „The main people affected are the unemployed, pensioners and those on low incomes. For many German citizens, more leisure time has always been associated with spending more money, which also explains the growth market for leisure time and the increase in leisure spending in recent years. However, income growth has not been able to keep pace with the increase in leisure time.
Inevitably, material orientations are on the rise again - but obviously also the consumption of television as compensation, which costs nothing. On the other hand, people's own ingenuity for other leisure activities that cost little or nothing is limited. People live in their leisure time, but cannot live on leisure time alone. The economic challenge of the future is therefore: how should the growing amount of leisure time actually be financed?“
According to the BAT study, there is only one population group where disapproval and approval are in balance: 48 per cent of respondents with a high school diploma or university degree put leisure orientation above earning money, and just as many (48%) are against it. Opaschowski comments: „The more highly educated have been at the forefront of the change in values over the last ten years. They are therefore still the most strongly attached to immaterial value orientations“.