Assessing the economic significance of domestic and related activities

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Goldschmidt-Clermont, Luisella¹

Note: [1] Luisella Goldschmidt-Clermont, Ph.D., is studying problems connected with the economic valuation of unpaid household work and of household production for own consumption. An independent researcher, she is Associate Member of the Centre d'Economie Politique, Institut de Sociologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her research has been suppored by the Belgian Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique and by the International Labour Office in Geneva where her professional activities are based.

Abstract: Conceptual, methodological and data collection considerations pertaining to the economic evaluation of domestic and related activities are discussed in the context of industrialised economies. Evaluations performed by several researchers indicate that these activities may require about as much labour time as all combined activities in the recorded sectors of the economy and that their unrecorded product may amount to 30 to 50 per cent of measured GNP. These orders of magnitude suggest that the labour involved in performing domestic and related activities and the contribution of these activities to households' actual consumption should not continue to go statistically unrecorded. It is argued that time-use measurements can yield an assessment of labour inputs while valuations of household output compatible with national accounting data can be achieved and can be presented in a satellite account, without modification of the production boundary.

DOI: 10.3233/SJU-1987-5106

Journal: Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 81-93, 1987