Would you work if you won the lottery? Tracking changes in the American work ethic

Abstract

Although many social scientists and political commentators have speculated that the American work ethic is in decline, the last longitudinal study of this issue was conducted by Vecchio (1980) on data collected over 30 years ago. Vecchio examined whether workers would wish to continue working even if it were not financially necessary (i.e., the so-called lottery question from the National Opinion Research Center survey) and concluded that there had been a significant decline in work ethic since the 1950s. In the current study, the authors used an updated data set that included data from 1980 through 2006 and found evidence for a declining trend since Vecchio’s study, although the decline seems to be leveling out. Demographic characteristics do not account for this apparent decline in shared sentiments about the importance of work for a productive life. The authors caution against drawing definitive conclusions, given the limitations of the lottery item as a measure of work ethic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)