Given that few of the team on FT Alphaville seem to get enough sleep (if bleary eyes, constant caffeination and early-morning typos are any indication), we found this post over Research Recap too good to pass up: “France Leads OECD Nations In Eating, Sleeping“.
The post features extracts from the latest edition of the OECD’s “Society at a Glance” report, which includes the following tidbits (emphasis ours):
The French spend more time sleeping than anyone else in OECD countries. They also devote more time to eating than anyone else and nearly double that of Americans, Canadians or Mexicans. The Japanese sleep nearly an hour less every night than the French and also spend longer at work and commuting than they do indulging in leisure activities.
No mention, however, of how long the French spend in queues, or filling out paperwork.
Note that the time-use surveys in the report are from 2006; it is quite possible the French are eating more and Americans sleeping less than ever before.
Also in the report:
Italian men have nearly 80 minutes a day of leisure more than women. Much of the additional work of Italian women is apparently spent cleaning the house. Norway is the most equal society, with men having only a few more minutes of leisure than women.
Norwegians spend just over a quarter of their time on leisure, the highest among OECD countries, while Mexicans spend just 16%, the lowest.
Watching TV absorbs nearly half of all leisure time in Mexico and Japan and falls to a low of 25% in New Zealand. Turkey is the most sociable nation, spending 35% of leisure time entertaining friends, more than triple the OECD average of 11%.
But OECD countries are not very physically active: Spain reports the highest proportion of leisure time spent doing regular physical activities. Even there, exercise accounts for a mere 13% of leisure time.
Rooting around on the OECD’s website throws up other similarly fascinating snippets about life in the member countries:
Americans are not getting taller. The United States is the only country in the OECD where men and women aged 45-49 are no taller than those aged 20-24 years old, indicating no improvement in health and social conditions determining gains in height. All other 22 OECD countries are seeing greater height gains between these two generations
Child poverty has fallen since the mid-1990s but one in five US children still live in poverty, a rate exceeded only in Poland, Mexico, and Turkey.
Obesity rates in the United Kingdom are the third highest in the OECD, after Mexico and the United States. The obesity rate has tripled over the past 20 years to reach one in four of the adult population
Japanese men and women have the longest life expectancy in the OECD. But few Japanese people think their health is good. Self-reported health in Japan is the 2nd lowest in the OECD after the Slovak Republic
After Koreans, Japanese sleep the least in 18 OECD countries, about 470 minutes per day.
FT Alphaville is moving to France. Maybe. But definitely not to Japan.
Related link:
The World’s New Numbers – Martin Walker / Wilson Quarterly