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As early as 1785, Thomas Jefferson said that Southerners were indolent, and he
was by no means the last person to say so.
"Until recently the paramount Southern trait in both the Southern and
non-Southern mind has been some variation on the theme that Southerners take
life easy," said John Shelton Reed, who recently retired from his post as
director of Carolina's Odum Institute for Research in Social Science.
"Over the last decade this perception has been changing," Reed said. "Many
people now see Southerners as more hard-working than other Americans or at
least no lazier than average. Older non-Southerners are still likely to see us
as less industrious than other Americans, but Southerners of all ages and young
people everywhere now have the opposite impression."
A recent Southern Focus Poll conducted by the institute indicates that by
several measures, Southerners' work lives are no different from those of other
workers nationwide.
"The percentage of Southerners and non-Southerners working full or part-time is
almost the same, despite a larger percentage of retirees in the South," said
Natalia Deeb-Sossa, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Carolina. "For
example, 66 percent of Southerners, compared with 69 percent of non-Southerners
said they worked full or part-time the previous week, while 15 percent of
Southerners and 11 percent of non-Southerners said they were retired. Of those
employed, both Southerners and those in other regions reported working an
average of about 44 hours the previous week."
When asked how many hours they had worked between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. the
previous week, 46 percent of Southern and 42 percent of non-Southerner workers
reported having put in at least some evening time. The average number of night
hours worked was about seven for Southerners and six for non-Southerners.
Similarly, 43 percent of employed Southerners and 40 percent of employed
non-Southerners said they had put in at least some work hours during the
previous weekend. Southern workers reported working about five hours the
previous weekend, compared to four hours for non-Southern workers.
"The UNC survey did not ask workers about their attitudes regarding work or
how hard they feel they work so it's possible that there are regional
differences along those lines that our questions did not tap," Deeb-Sossa said.
"However, previous Southern Focus Polls have found few differences between
Southerners and non-Southerners on such questions as whether they feel they
have enough time for work, how often they feel rushed and how much time on a
typical work day they have to read, watch TV or spend however they want."
"Whatever basis the stereotype of Southern indolence ever had in fact, there's
no evidence for it in the similarity of work experiences we find across regions
these days," Reed said.
In the Carolina study, people living in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas and Virginia were considered Southerners.
Institute staff and students conducted the Southern Focus Poll in last fall and
have been analyzing responses to questions on a variety of subjects since then.
Interviewers spoke with random samples of 842 Southerners and 402
non-Southerners by telephone.
The sampling error was plus or minus 3.5 percent for the Southern sample and
plus or minus 5 percent for the non-Southern sample.
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