Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective

Philippe Coulangeon, Observatoire Sociologique du changement (OSC), SciencesPo/CNRS, Paris, France

2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract

Leisure and cultural consumption are today considered key components in a persons or a nations quality of life. Despite
the historic decline in the hours spent at paid labor, current trends in leisure time are unclear. Recent developments suggest
a possible halt in the road toward the leisure society and a reversal of the leisure/status gradient. However, the sheer
availability of leisure time is not the whole story. Scarcity in leisure time can be offset by a more intensive use of it. As
discussed in this article, such use relies on nancial and cultural resources which are associated with education and, to some
extent, with nationality

Leisure is increasingly considered a key component of quality
of life (Stiglitz et al., 2010). Leisure is classically dened as all
activities that we cannot pay somebody else to do for us and we
do not really have to do at all if we do not wish to (Burda et al.,
2007: p. 1). In other words, leisure corresponds to the portion
of time freed from the necessity of labor, whether paid or
unpaid. Looked at this way, leisure is equivalent to resting time.
But this very general perspective fails to grasp some of leisures
qualitative aspects: How people spend their free time matters,
too. Therefore, researchers interested in leisure usually focus on
specic topics such as sport or cultural participation.
Hereafter, leisure is thus chiey considered in relation to
cultural participation and consumption. Leisure and cultural
consumption are also considered from the perspective of social
inequalities in access to recreational and cultural facilities.
Because many European countries devote a signicant amount
of public funding to culture, cultural participation is also
a public policy issue. And the main concern of policy makers in
that domain is precisely to ensure fair access to cultural and
recreational goods.
General Trends
Trends in leisure and cultural participation can be studied in
various ways. First, one can rely on expenditure data. But
expenditure alone can be misleading insofar as it reduces the
value of leisure activities to their market price and conceals all
recreational and cultural activities that do not entail any market
transaction. In addition, as the data on expenditure mainly
relate to households, they cannot assess individual practices.
For these reasons, it is necessary to supplement expenditure
data with information on the amount of time people spend on
leisure and recreational activities and with data on cultural
participation.
Trends in Cultural and Recreational Expenditures
Cultural and recreational expenditures consist of a wide variety
of goods and services: books, newspapers, cinema, museums;
TV and radio taxes; goods used in amateur activities, such as
drawing materials and musical instruments; audiovisual,
photographic, and information processing equipment; games
and toys; plants and owers; package holidays; pets and related
products. In 2005, cultural and recreational expenditure
accounted on average for approximately 9% of total household
expenditure in 27 European countries, ranging from 3% in
Bulgaria to 13% in Sweden (see Figure 1).
The ranking of European countries displays a clear South/
North gradient and, to a lesser extent, an East/West one. A rst
group of countries, where the share of cultural and recreational
expenditure accounts for more than 10% of total expenditure
of households, includes all Scandinavian countries together
with Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands,
and the United Kingdom. In contrast, cultural and recreational
expenditures account for less than 5% of household expendi-
ture in Lithuania, Romania, Greece, and Bulgaria. Variations
across countries reect differences in wealth, price structures,
and availability of cultural and recreational amenities. Avail-
ability, in turn, is partly dependent on the level of public
funding for leisure and cultural infrastructures.
But these disparities also reveal variations in intrinsic pref-
erence for leisure. This is shown in Figure 2, which plots
household total expenditure against share of cultural and
recreational expenditure in this total. The crossing of these two
dimensions denes four groups of countries. The rst consists
of ones where both household total expenditure and share of
the recreational and cultural expenses are above the EU27
mean: Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Austria, the Nether-
lands, and the United Kingdom. All of them are quite wealthy
countries, supporting the idea that the share of total expendi-
ture devoted to leisure and culture is primarily linked to
earnings and wealth. A second group Bulgaria, Lithuania,
Romania, Estonia, Slovakia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, and
Portugal consists of countries where both household total
expenditure and share of the recreational and cultural expenses
are below the EU27 mean. As these countries are on the whole
poorer than those of the rst group, this second conguration
also supports the hypothesis that cultural and recreational
expenditure share is mainly due to global wealth.
The other two groups are not completely supportive of this
pure wealth effect, however. The third group, reduced to one
country the Czech Republic is characterized by the highly
improbable combination of above-average share of leisure and
total expenditure below the European mean. Interestingly,
the nal group consists of countries where a high level of

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 13 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.10420-9 837
838 Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective

Bulgaria - BG
Greece - GR
Romania - RO
Lithuania - LT
Portugal - PT
Italy - IT
Cyprus (Republic) - CY
Slovakia - SK
Poland - PL
Latvia - LV
Estonia - EA
Spain - SP
France - FR
Luxembourg - LU
Hungary - HU
EU27
Slovenia - Sl
Belgium - BE
Malta - MT
Ireland - IE
Czech Republic - CZ
The Netherlands - NL
Germany - DE
Finland - FI
Denmark - DK
United Kingdom - UK
Austria - AT
Sweden - SW
0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14%

Figure 1 Share of recreation and culture in households expenditures in 2005 in EU27. Source: Eurostat, Household Budget Survey 2005.

Total expenditure in PPS

52 500 LU

47 500

42 500

37 500
IE
CY
32 500 UK
GR NL AT
BE
IT MT
27 500 FR DE
SP EU27
SW
SI FI DK
22 500
PT
17 500

12 500 SK EA CZ
LV HU
LT PL
7500 BG
RO
2500
2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14%
Share of cultural and recreaonal expenditure in total expenditure (%)

Figure 2 Total household expenditure and share of cultural and recreational expenditure in 2005 EU27. Note: households nal consumption
expenditure is measured in pps (purchasing power standard) Source: Eurostat, Household Budget Survey 2005.
 Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
household expenditure coexists with a rather low share dedi-
cated to culture and leisure: France, Spain, Italy, Greece,
Cyprus, and Luxembourg. These two congurations, especially
the latter, illustrate the limits of cross-national comparisons in
cultural and recreational expenditure. To the extent that
a substantial part of cultural and recreational amenities,
although highly variable from one country to another, is
publicly funded, cross-national comparisons are biased by the
coexistence of market and nonmarket goods. In that sense,
a relatively low level of private cultural and recreational
expenditure is not necessarily synonymous with a small
commitment to culture. For this reason, the household
expenditure approach must be supplemented by leisure time
budget and cultural participation statistics.
Trends in Leisure Time
Technically speaking, leisure might be considered residual
time: the time remaining after paid and unpaid work (house-
hold chores), child and personal care have been subtracted
from the total amount of waking time per day. According to
this criterion, however, many activities are ambiguous. Is the
time devoted to reading stories to a child a matter of leisure or
a matter of child care? Is time devoted to cook a meal for
friends a matter of domestic chores or recreational time? To
what extent can the time devoted to repairing a car, decorating
a house, or doing arts and crafts at home be included in
leisure time?
To explicitly take into account the ambiguous nature of
such activities, they are sometimes labeled semi-leisure activ-
ities. Relying on this extended notion of leisure time, three
major tendencies can be highlighted in Europe in recent
decades: (1) a slight decrease in time devoted to leisure, at least
in some countries; (2) an increasing variability of the distri-
bution of time allocated to leisure; and (3) a strong heteroge-
neity in the cultural contents of leisure.
A Pause on the Road toward the Leisure Society
At the beginning of the 1960s, the French sociologist Joffre
Dumazedier prophesied the coming of a leisure society
(Dumazedier, 1962). From the end of the nineteenth century to
the third-quarter of the twentieth century, the continuous
decline in the number of hours of paid work observed in many
Western countries supported Dumazediers prediction. Since
2200
2100
2000
1900
1800
1700
1600
1500
1400
1300
Figure 3 Annual hours worked by the total employed population in selected OECD countries. Source: OECD, Employment Outlook 2006.
839
the late 1970s, however, in many countries, the trend has not
continued (Zuzanek et al., 1998; Gershuny, 2000; Chenu and
Herpin, 2002). Since then, European countries have followed
slightly different trends. In some (e.g., Sweden and the United
Kingdom), the annual number of paid work hours started to
increase at the beginning of the 1980s, whereas in others (e.g.,
Denmark and, to a lesser extent, France), this reversal occurred
later and was less pronounced (Figure 3).
The same holds true when leisure is dened as the time that
remains after subtracting paid and unpaid work. Since the end
of the 1970s, countries such as Norway, the Netherlands, and
France experienced a signicant decline in the leisure time of
men. The same is true for women in Norway, the Netherlands,
and the United Kingdom (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012).
As argued by Gershuny (2009), the work/leisure balance has
evolved differently for men and women. In nearly all countries,
men experienced an increase in the proportion of unpaid
relative to paid work, whereas the opposite was true for
women. Changes in leisure time may reect these shifts
between paid and unpaid labor. Furthermore, the average
amount of leisure time is highly variable form one country to
another. According to the Eurostat Time Use Survey, leisure
time in 2000 varied from a minimum of 4:13 a day in
Lithuania to a maximum of 5:46 in Norway (Figure 4).
According to Gershuny (2009), this trend (which of course
may be only temporary) might reect a deeper change in the
social meaning of leisure. In the industrial society, leisure was
the privilege of the dominant classes who owned the means of
production and exploited the workforce of nonowners. At that
time, as asserted by Veblen (1899) in his leisure class theory,
idleness was a correlate of wealth. But the emulation principle
that governed social dynamics made leisure universally desir-
able: People tried to emulate the lifestyle of those just above
them in the hierarchy of social prestige and power. Combined
with the labor productivity gains that went along with the
development of capital accumulation during the rst three-
quarters of the twentieth century, this emulation principle led
to the observed decline in the duration of paid work and the
associated increase in leisure time.
In contemporary Western countries, however, it is not clear
whether these social dynamics are still in play. Modern
capitalist companies increasingly separate ownership and
management. The upshot is that for the dominant social
classes, human capital has become more important than
Denmark
Finland
France
Iceland
Italy
Norway
Sweden
Switzerland
UK
840 Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective

07:00

06:00

05:00

04:00

03:00

02:00

01:00

00:00

Figure 4 Leisure time in 2000 in 14 European countries. Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.

capital as such. Income and power increasingly derive not from
ownership of capital (e.g., factories) but from highly qualied,
highly paid jobs (Gershuny, 2009). In short, people at the top
are working longer hours, thereby realizing the counter-
prophecy of a harried dominant class (Linder, 1970). The
trends in leisure inequalities noted above are partially
supportive of this scenario.
The Reversal of the Leisure/Status Gradient
Another meaningful evolution observed in recent decades in
the West in general, and in Europe in particular, is the
increasingly unequal distribution of leisure since the 1970s
(Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012). This increase in leisure
inequality is closely but negatively linked to the increasing
inequality in earnings that occurred in the same period. Indeed,
those who have beneted the most from the former are those
who have suffered the most from the latter. In an increasingly
knowledge-based economy, high earnings predominantly
accrue to the most educated people. In other words, high
incomes function as an incentive to increase the amount of
paid work and reduce leisure time. By contrast, less-educated
people work fewer hours, earn less, and have more leisure
time (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012). This results in
a reversal of the leisure/status gradient: whereas in the past the
wealthiest people had more leisure time than others, now they
have less (Gershuny, 2009).
This is not to say, though, that increased leisure time for the
less wealthy is adequate compensation for their economic
downgrading. One could argue that the wealthiest and most
educated people compensate for the scarcity of their leisure
time by using it intensively, made possible by the economic
and cultural resources available to them (Coulangeon et al.,
2002; Degenne et al., 2002; Gronau and Hamermesh, 2008).
It might also be noted that leisure time in Europe is highly
gendered. As shown in Figure 5, across Europe men have more
leisure than women (about 38 min more on average). The
cross-national variations display a rather clear north/south and
west/east gradient. Gender differences are minimal in Norway
(4 min) and maximal in Poland (56 min) and Italy (79 min).
The Cultural Paradox of Free Time
Inequality in leisure is not exclusively a matter of quantity; it is
also and primarily a matter of quality. In other words, what
people do with their free time, whatever its amount, matters.
This can be illustrated by the total time spent on TV and TV as
share of total leisure time according to level of education. As

90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

Figure 5 Gender differences (minutes per day) in leisure time, showing more leisure time for men, 2006. Source: OECD estimates, based on
national and multinational time use surveys.
 Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective 841

shown in Table 1, the average daily time devoted to TV ranges
from 1:49 in Germany to 2:27 in Bulgaria. Across all nine
countries shown in Table 1, TV accounts for roughly 4060%
of total leisure time, ranging from 39% in Spain to 58%
in Bulgaria.
With the exception of Slovenia and Bulgaria, daily time
devoted to TV is negatively related to level of education. This
negative relation is particularly strong in the United Kingdom
and France, where the least educated watched TV for 1:15 and
1:20, respectively, more than the most educated. In these
countries especially, TV watching appears as a particularly
illegitimate practice for the culturally well-to-do (Lahire, 2004).
It is also noticeable that in all countries time spent on
reading increases with education (Table 2). More generally, it
has been shown elsewhere that TV watching is the only cultural
practice whose intensity is negatively correlated with all other
cultural practices (Coulangeon and Lemel, 2009).
In the nine countries shown in Table 2, daily reading time
ranges from 15 min in Spain to 46 min in Finland. Time
devoted to reading is strongly and positively related to educa-
tion. But even among the most educated people of the most
reading countries, such as Finland or Estonia, reading never
represents more than 19% of total leisure time.
More generally, it can be demonstrated that the cultural
content of leisure time tends to be negatively correlated with
quantity. On average, people who have the most leisure time have
the fewest number of cultural practices (Coulangeon et al., 2002).
Among the most educated people and among the upper classes,
intensity and efciency of the use of time seems to partially
compensate for its relative scarcity. In that sense, access to more
active and culturally intensive practices seems to be a matter of
nancial and cognitive resources rather than a matter of time as
such. Furthermore, many recreational practices take place over
a longer timescale that cannot be adequately grasped on a daily

Table 1 Time spent watching TV (h:min per day) by level of education, 2000

Bulgaria Germany Estonia Spain France Lithuania Slovenia Finland UK

Mean time spent on TV

Level 1 2:05 2:22 2:52 2:25 2:37 2:34 1:31 2:46 3:03
Level 2 2:29 2:15 2:43 1:55 2:03 2:51 1:53 2:20 2:35
Level 34 2:30 1:53 2:16 1:34 1:54 2:17 2:00 2:08 2:14
Level 5B 2:27 1:49 1:59 1:29 1:27 1:52 1:42 1:57 2:02
Level 5A 2:25 1:28 1:49 1:21 1:17 1:48 1:34 1:50 1:48
Mean 2:27 1:49 2:16 1:53 2:01 2:16 1:57 2:13 2:23
Share of TV in total leisure time
Level 1 48% 41% 49% 44% 53% 49% 30% 42% 50%
Level 2 59% 38% 51% 41% 46% 57% 39% 41% 50%
Level 34 60% 34% 51% 35% 45% 56% 40% 40% 47%
Level 5B 57% 34% 49% 33% 38% 52% 31% 38% 41%
Level 5A 54% 28% 43% 30% 32% 45% 33% 35% 38%
Mean 58% 33% 49% 39% 46% 54% 39% 40% 46%

Note: Level 1: Primary education or rst stage of basic education.

Level 2: Lower secondary or second stage of basic education.
Level 3 and 4: Upper secondary and postsecondary nontertiary education.
Level 5B: First stage of tertiary education, programs which are practically oriented and occupationally specic.
Level 5A: First stage of tertiary education, tertiary programs that are theoretically based/research preparatory or giving access to professions with high skill requirements.
Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.

Table 2 Time spent reading (h:min per day) by level of education, 2000

Bulgaria Germany Estonia Spain France Lithuania Slovenia Finland UK

Mean time spent on reading

Level 1 0:03 0:20 0:32 0:09 0:22 0:18 0:12 0:49 0:31
Level 2 0:09 0:33 0:35 0:12 0:25 0:20 0:14 0:39 0:22
Level 34 0:19 0:35 0:35 0:16 0:18 0:22 0:23 0:41 0:20
Level 5B 0:28 0:38 0:38 0:24 0:25 0:22 0:39 0:48 0:29
Level 5A 0:36 0:43 0:45 0:30 0:34 0:32 0:36 0:59 0:32
Mean 0:18 0:38 0:37 0:15 0:23 0:23 0:23 0:46 0:26
Share of reading in total leisure time
Level 1 1% 6% 9% 3% 7% 6% 4% 12% 9%
Level 2 4% 9% 11% 4% 9% 7% 5% 12% 7%
Level 34 8% 11% 13% 6% 7% 9% 8% 13% 7%
Level 5B 11% 12% 16% 9% 11% 10% 12% 16% 10%
Level 5A 13% 14% 18% 11% 14% 13% 12% 19% 11%
Mean 7% 12% 13% 5% 9% 9% 8% 14% 8%

Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.

842 Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective

basis. For this reason, beyond the timebudget approach, data on attend the cinema at least once a year, whereas other cultural
cultural and recreational practices may provide further insight. facilities are less frequently attended.
Beyond this general statement, cross-national comparison
displays huge discrepancies across Europe. For example, on
Trends in Cultural Participation
average 18.5% of Europeans attend a ballet, dance perfor-
Cultural facilities have different rates of attendance. As shown mance, or opera at least once a year, but, as shown in Table 3,
in Figure 6, about 50% of Europeans visit historical sites or the rate varies from 7.5% in Portugal to 34.3% in Sweden.
Again, western and northern European countries differ
from eastern and southern ones. One might suspect that
Historical site 50.7% these variations may be due to differences in the availability
Cinema
of cultural facilities, which is itself highly dependent on
46.1%
degree of urbanization. However, as Table 3 shows, when the
Concert 38.7% data are examined separately for rural area, middle town and
large town, the ranking of the countries remains much the
Museum/gallery 38.3%
same. Differences between countries are not reducible to
Public library 33.3% their level of urbanization, therefore, but reect dissimilar-
ities in global wealth and supply of cultural amenities. In
Theater 31.3% that sense, it is particularly noticeable that, except for
Ballet/dance/opera
Estonia, the countries where the contrast between rural and
18.5%
urban areas is the strongest (as shown by the odds ratio in
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% the right-hand column) are also those with the smallest rate
of attendance overall.
Figure 6 Attendance at cultural facilities, EU27, 2013. Note: proportion The contrasts between European nations remain consistent
of respondents who have been at least one time in each of the facilities
when we turn to more common cultural practices, such as
in the year preceding the survey. Source :Eurostat, Eurobarometer
movie going (Table 4). The ranking is similar, as is the
79.2, 2013.

Table 3 Ballet, dance performance, or opera attendance, 2013 Table 4 Cinema attendance, 2013

Rural area Middle town Large town Mean OR (%) Rural area Middle town Large town Mean OR

Portugal 5.65 9.92 6.51 7.5 1.2 Romania 10.6 20.7 31.6 19.8 2.1
Greece 5.42 14.72 11.07 10.1 2.2 Portugal 15.5 33.6 31.6 25.9 1.9
Poland 6.6 7.87 17.63 10.1 3.0 Bulgaria 13.8 13.7 39.5 26.2 2.2
Romania 5.42 12.26 18.89 11.4 4.1 Hungary 22.9 29.5 40.9 31.5 1.5
Bulgaria 4.35 11.69 15.59 11.6 4.1 Cyprus (Republic) 19.6 41.1 34.6 32.9 2.0
Hungary 7.65 10.82 15.93 11.6 2.3 Slovakia 31.7 32.7 48.5 34.4 1.1
Cyprus (Republic) 2.9 22.16 9.34 12.3 3.4 Greece 25.3 35.6 40.2 35.3 1.6
Slovakia 12.12 13.73 23.13 14.3 2.2 Poland 26.7 31.8 55.0 36.3 1.6
Slovenia 11.47 17.02 18.4 14.9 1.7 Slovenia 34.4 44.4 43.6 39.9 1.3
Spain 12.64 18.5 17.03 15.1 1.4 Lithuania 25.2 38.1 54.5 40.1 2.0
Malta 14.72 15.87 25 16.2 1.9 Malta 37.1 48.4 39.1 40.2 1.1
Czech Republic 16.56 14.86 20.73 16.9 1.3 Estonia 27.8 40.1 57.1 40.8 1.8
Finland 13.61 16.95 23.86 17.1 2.0 Latvia 30.9 43.0 51.6 41.3 1.6
Italy 14.29 18.11 21.13 18.1 1.6 Finland 34.7 40.7 55.7 41.5 1.3
EU27 14.43 18.66 23.19 18.5 1.8 EU27 38.0 47.9 53.7 46.1 1.4
Austria 16.36 19.24 21.97 19.1 1.4 Germany East 41.9 38.6 60.0 46.4 1.2
Germany West 17.59 18.03 24.54 19.4 1.5 Spain 40.5 54.2 55.9 47.2 1.3
Ireland 14.37 17.53 25.2 19.4 2.0 Czech Republic 42.7 48.1 52.4 47.6 1.2
United Kingdom 21.96 20.22 21.57 21.1 1.0 Belgium 48.6 52.1 53.7 51.0 1.1
Belgium 18.2 22.87 25.53 21.5 1.5 Italy 47.0 52.9 61.5 53.7 1.3
Germany East 15.38 18.29 32.78 22.5 2.7 Germany West 52.2 57.9 59.3 56.3 1.2
Lithuania 17.32 18.49 34.98 23.4 2.6 United Kingdom 47.8 58.7 61.1 56.7 1.4
The Netherlands 20.49 23.37 28.63 23.5 1.6 Austria 52.0 61.2 65.6 59.2 1.3
Latvia 19.24 20.06 33.23 24 2.1 Luxembourg 59.1 60.0 61.8 59.8 1.0
Estonia 14.44 20.5 40.38 24.4 4.0 France 54.8 63.0 68.6 61.0 1.3
France 23.25 23.46 30.88 24.9 1.5 Ireland 52.1 63.2 69.2 61.8 1.5
Denmark 19.42 26.71 32.23 26.1 2.0 The Netherlands 58.1 67.1 71.0 64.4 1.3
Luxembourg 30.45 28.26 34.55 29.9 1.2 Sweden 56.5 67.0 78.3 67.7 1.6
Sweden 28.46 33.41 40.8 34.3 1.7 Denmark 66.2 69.8 77.7 70.7 1.2

Note: The gures above represent the percentage of respondents who attended at Note: The gures above represent the percentage of respondents who attended the
least one ballet, dance performance, or opera in the year preceding the survey. cinema at least once in the year preceding the survey.
OR odds ratio (for explanation, see footnote 1). OR odds ratio (see footnote 1).
Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013. Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013.
 Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective 843

contrast between western and northern Europe, on the one
hand, and southern and eastern Europe, on the other. The
most signicant exceptions are Estonia and Latvia, which rank
much higher on ballet, dance performance, or opera than on
cinema. In addition, the differences between urban and rural
areas are much smaller for cinema than for ballet, dance,
and opera.
All in all, cross-national differences in access to cultural
amenities are quite similar in the realm of mass culture and
in the elite culture domain. Differences between countries
appear to be more a matter of global afuence than cultural
legitimacy, in Bourdieus sense of the notion (Bourdieu,
1984[1979]).
Across Europe, access to cultural facilities displays huge
inequalities with respect to social class, education, age, and
gender. Relative to other groups, professionals display
a higher commitment to cultural participation, as shown by
the values of the cultural participation index reproduced in
Table 5. The countries ranking on this index is consistent
with previous results, contrasting once again the same
subgroups. It is also again noticeable that the relative
distance between groups, as measured by the ratio of the
professionals score to the manual workers score, is highest
in countries with the lowest average scores, such as Portugal
and Hungary, and lowest in countries with the highest
average scores, such as Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.
These three last countries are also known to be more egali-
tarian in many other respects (income, wealth, health,
education). The variations in the magnitude of the between-
group differences in cultural participation thus suggest that
culture is a stronger social marker in unequal societies than
in more egalitarian ones (Hjellbrekke and Korsnes, 2014).
These variations might also be due to the impact of educa-
tional and cultural policies.
Finally, it is worth noting that the cultural participation
scores of the professionals are much more homogeneous across
nations than the scores of other groups, as shown by the rela-
tive standard deviations in the bottom row of Table 5. Note
that these values are lowest for the professionals, highest for
farmers and sherman, and twice as high for manual workers
than for professionals. European elites appear more culturally
homogeneous than the rest of the population.

Table 5 Cultural Participation Index by occupation, 2013

FARM SSE PROF MID NMWkrs MWkrs Total Ratio PROF/MWkrs

Portugal 3.1 3.3 8.1 7.2 4.8 2.3 3.7 3.6

Greece 1.0 3.0 8.0 6.3 5.0 2.5 4.1 3.3
Romania 1.7 5.0 8.5 4.2 5.1 2.9 4.3 2.9
Cyprus (Republic) 0.8 3.6 7.1 5.6 4.6 3.0 4.5 2.4
Hungary 2.2 6.7 11.1 7.0 5.9 3.0 4.8 3.7
Poland 2.0 5.9 8.6 8.8 5.9 3.3 5.2 2.6
Bulgaria 1.5 4.6 8.5 6.8 6.0 3.1 5.3 2.7
Italy 1.8 5.0 9.2 8.3 6.2 3.7 5.6 2.5
Slovakia 7.5 6.3 9.1 8.7 6.9 4.0 6.5 2.3
Malta 6.5 6.5 11.3 9.0 7.6 4.6 6.5 2.5
Spain 4.5 6.3 10.4 11.1 8.2 5.4 6.8 1.9
Czech Republic 7.6 6.2 9.3 10.5 7.4 4.8 7.4 2.0
EU27 3.8 6.2 11.0 10.3 8.1 4.7 7.5 2.3
Austria 4.2 8.0 10.5 9.6 7.5 5.0 7.5 2.1
Belgium 4.8 6.2 11.6 9.9 8.5 4.2 7.5 2.8
Germany West 2.8 7.0 10.8 8.8 7.8 4.7 7.9 2.3
Germany East 10.3 3.9 11.1 9.9 7.9 4.8 8.0 2.3
Lithuania 7.0 8.5 10.9 9.6 8.4 5.4 8.0 2.0
Slovenia 4.7 9.1 11.9 9.8 8.3 5.5 8.1 2.2
Ireland 9.1 10.7 11.1 10.6 7.7 5.9 8.2 1.9
France 6.4 9.2 13.5 10.7 8.2 5.4 8.7 2.5
Latvia 9.0 9.1 10.7 10.8 8.8 6.1 8.7 1.8
Finland 3.9 8.1 9.4 11.1 9.7 7.0 8.8 1.3
Luxembourg 6.4 9.3 12.1 10.6 9.2 5.9 9.1 2.0
United Kingdom 5.7 9.6 11.5 10.8 10.0 6.7 9.2 1.7
Estonia 7.0 10.0 12.0 12.3 9.9 6.8 9.4 1.8
The Netherlands 9.1 8.3 12.5 11.4 10.9 7.0 10.7 1.8
Denmark 7.5 10.3 13.6 13.6 11.2 8.3 11.1 1.6
Sweden 7.7 9.9 13.7 14.3 12.4 9.6 12.8 1.4
RSD 0.54 0.32 0.17 0.23 0.25 0.35 0.30

Note: The relative standard deviation coefcient (RSD) corresponds to the standard deviation divided by the mean of the values of the cultural index across the 27 nations.
FARM: Farmers and shermen.
SSE: Small self-employed.
PROF: Professionals, business proprietors, owners, employed professionals, top managers.
MID: Middle managers, supervisors.
NMWkrs: Nonmanual routine workers.
MWkrs: Manual routine workers.
Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013.
844 Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
Summary and Conclusions
Regarding leisure and cultural consumption in Europe, three
main tendencies deserve to be underlined. First, time budget
surveys suggest a possible halt on the road toward the so-called
leisure society. Second, and as shown repeatedly in this article,
variations in leisure and cultural consumption vary signi-
cantly from one country to another. Third, leisure time remains
subjected to signicant inequalities, especially in terms of class,
education, and gender. The pattern of inequalities is, however,
complex. On average, the most advantaged in leisure time are
the most disadvantaged in economic, educational, and cultural
resources. As demonstrated by Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarsfeld,
and Hans Zeisel about the Marienthal unemployed (Jahoda
et al., 1971[1932]) and dramatically illustrated today in
some European countries grappling with massive unemploy-
ment overabundant free time is not necessarily synonymous
with true leisure. Leisure time cannot be an end in itself if
people cannot afford to enjoy it.
See also: Cultural Participation, Trends in; Cultural Policy
Regimes in Western Europe; Formal Methods of Cultural
Analysis; Globalization and World Culture; Leisure and Cultural
Consumption: US Perspective; Social Inequality in Cultural
Consumption Patterns.
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