Working Hard

Just like hard-working individuals, hard-working countries will generally be more productive and find ways to improve faster than those who are less hard working. We believe a country’s work ethic impacts both the level of its relative advantage today and the pace at which it learns and improves over time. Working hard doesn’t just mean working a lot of hours; it means having a certain ethic, a determination to achieve quality outcomes and to improve. Demographics can also impact the work ethic of a society—when a society ages and the number of dependents rises relative to those in the workforce, it can impact the overall work ethic of the society. Similarly, when there is a boom of young professionals, it can improve the vibrancy, initiative and determination of the society. We expect a country with a hard-working society that is low-cost to be more competitive and grow faster than a country with a population that prefers leisure and is expensive.

就像努力工作的人一样，勤奋工作的国家通常会更有成效，比那些努力工作的人更难找到改进的方法。我们认为，一个国家的工作伦理会影响当今的相对优势水平，以及随着时间的推移而学习和改进的步伐。努力工作不仅仅意味着工作很多小时;这意味着有一定的伦理道德，决心实现质量结果和改善。人口统计学也可能影响社会的工作伦理 - 当一个社会年龄和受抚养人数量相对于劳动者人数增加时，这可能会影响社会的整体工作伦理。同样，当年轻的专业人​​士兴起时，可以提高社会的活力，主动性和决心。我们期望一个劳动强度低的社会成本更低，更具竞争力，成长速度快于人们喜欢休闲和昂贵的国家。

To construct a simple measure of working hard, we look at two pieces, 1) average weekly hours of actual work by men in the labor force, adjusting for things like vacation time and holidays, and 2) shifts in the amount of the population as a whole that is working. While the number of hours worked is just one measure of the effort a country puts in, and doesn’t account for the determination and effort put in during those hours, it gives us a decent starting point; we return to some other measures that triangulate our picture when we look at culture. Just using this gauge on its own yields a 53% correlation with future growth, but when combined with cost indications, it is 66% correlated with subsequent 10-year growth.

要构建一个努力工作的简单措施，我们来看待两件事：1）劳动力中男性实际工作的平均每周工作时间，适应休假时间和假期等情况，以及2）人口数量的变化一个正在工作的整体。虽然工作时间只是衡量一个国家所做出的努力的一个标准，但并不能说明这些时间内所作出的决心和努力，它给了我们一个体面的起点;我们回到采取一些其他的措施，当我们看文化时，我们的三角测量。仅仅使用这个量表就可以与未来的增长率有53％的相关性，但与成本指标结合在一起，与随后的10年增长率相关。

We look at our aggregate measure below first, followed by components. Emerging Asian workers are generally the hardest workers in the world, including China, India and Thailand. Mexico also stands out as particularly hard-working. Among the richer countries, Singapore is by far the hardest working (competitive with much poorer countries), and Japanese workers are some of the most hard-working of developed countries, followed by the English-speaking developed countries. Continental European workers are generally the least hard-working in the world. Adjusting for cost largely keeps these divergences in place, though India’s relative cheapness makes it look more attractive.

我们先看看我们的总体措施，然后是组件。新兴的亚洲工人一般是中国，印度，泰国等世界上最难的工人。墨西哥也脱颖而出，特别努力。在更富裕的国家中，新加坡是最难的工作（与较贫穷的国家竞争），日本的工人是发达国家最努力的工作，其次是英语发达国家。欧洲大陆工作者通常是世界上最难的工作。调整成本在很大程度上保持了这些分歧，尽管印度相对便宜化使其看起来更有吸引力。