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We study the impact of entertainment technology on labor supply. Using Social Security
work histories and a natural experiment arising from the regulated U.S. rollout of television,
we estimate that a station launch reduced the probability of working by around 0.3 percentage
points, driven mainly by an increase in retirement rates among older age groups. The results
support the hypothesis that the rise of television contributed to the mid-century transition of
retirement from a necessity to “golden years” of enjoyment. Our findings indicate that entertainment
innovations have a less pronounced effect on overall labor supply trends than model
calibrations in previous literature suggest.
