Americans have less vacation time, but so what

Inspired by the above exchange between Scott Alexander and a commenter on the former’s blog, a common argument I see is that Americans are overworked and have little vacation time compared to Europeans. Indeed, Americans have fewer holidays compared to Europeans and take fewer days off:

As the narrative goes, this makes Americans more depressed or explains high rates of stress of Americans compared to other developed nations.

Regarding depression, America does not have appreciably higher rates of diagnosed clinical depression compared to Europeans despite less vacation time:

This notion of Americans having less vacation time as always being bad, has always struck me as confusing causality or overlooking obvious questions. Are Americans choosing to take fewer vacations, or are they overworked because they have no choice? Or is less vacation time a worthwhile tradeoff?

Perhaps Americans work more because the returns to work are higher, such as more pay and purchasing power, as I discuss in the article Why Americans Work So much? Perhaps Americans work a lot because they also earn a lot of money, and can spend or invest that money on toys, like Cybertrucks. Who needs more vacation when you can buy cool stuff?

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