How long do you want to work?

 In some countries, some workers complain about long working hours and there have been some cases of death from overwork that we hear from news. To prevent death from overwork from happening, some governments make laws to limit the maximum working hours for a worker and require employees to pay overtime work allowances.

In economics, there is a very simple model of working decisions that is frequently used in many micro-foundation macroeconomics models. This model suggests that the decision of working is made based on two parts, one part is the utility gained from leisure time and consumption, the other part is the incomes from working. However, in the reality, people do not work overtime just because of these simple reasons; there are many other even more important reasons. Firstly, the working hours potentially influence workers' future incomes, at least their expected future incomes. Usually, people believe if they work long enough when they are young, they are more likely to get higher incomes in the future. Secondly, the working hours depend on outside environment. When an industry is in a boom or an economy is in a boom, then the workers in this industry or economy are more likely to work overtime because there are more opportunities available that they do not want to throw away. In addition, when the economy is growing rapidly, it is often true for the wealth gap to become wider, then people know additional working hours at the moment can potentially provide much more marginal benefits than previously than previous or later when the economic growth slows down. Thirdly, people can influence each other and learn from each other. When one person succeeded because of overtime work, then many other people would like to learn from his or her example and also work overtime.

Therefore, in general, we do not just make our working decision based on the current wage level and our consumption, but we also build a relationship between current work and future achievement as well.