Italian children receive record amounts of homework from their teachers. Along with students from France, Russia and South Africa, they do an average two hours' homework a day, while American children do less than an hour a day according to the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, an independent research body in the United States. However, the amount of homework done by schoolchildren in Italy is half what it was 40 years ago. This decrease is partly due to longer school hours, with 25 per cent of primary schools and 16 percent of secondary schools now open all day instead of for just half a day, and partly because an increase in wealth has meant a larger variety of leisure activities is now available to children.