Years

In 1856, the average British worker (by far, the wealthiest labor class in Europe at the time) worked 124000 hours across its lifetime. In 1981, it worked only for 69000 hours - which means that despite the career length staying the same (around 40 years), the fraction of working hours / lifetime decreased from 50% to 20%. These are the conclusions of a paper published on "The Rockefeller University".

These are the long-term benefits of a society engineered towards innovation through liberalism and capitalism.