Measuring the Gendered Economy

Gretchen Donehower ()
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Gretchen Donehower: University of California at Berkeley

Working Papers from University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit

Abstract: If we want to imagine the details of a person’s life, one of the most relevant facts about that person we can know is age. Given age, we can take a decent guess at many other aspects of life, such as household arrangement, educational status, work life, risk of death, relationship with the public sector, and many other features. For example, a 2-year-old most likely lives with one or two parents, is not involved in formal education or the labor force, has a fairly low probability of death, and is neither paying taxes nor receiving more than a small amount of public benefits that might go toward health care or as part of a family benefit. In contrast, a 40-year-old most likely lives with a spouse or partner and one or more children, has completed education, is in the labor force earning income and paying taxes, as well as making substantial transfers to family members to support their consumption. The ability of age to tell us so much about a person’s social and economic life is one of the central motivations behind the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) project.

Keywords: Generational economy; National Transfer Accounts; measurement; Gender; Women's work; labour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in CWW Working Paper Series by the Development Policy Research Unit, July 2018, pages 1-36

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