Assessing the value of household work based on wages demanded on online platforms for substitutes

Simona Jokubauskaitė and Alyssa Schneebaum
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Simona Jokubauskaitė: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Review of Economics of the Household, 2022, vol. 20, issue 1, No 7, 153-160

Abstract: Abstract We propose an improved method to assess the economic value of unpaid housework and childcare. Existing literature has typically assigned a minimum, generalist or specialist’s wage, or the performer’s opportunity cost to the hourly value of these activities. Then it was used to calculate macro-level value based on the number of hours spent in this work. In this paper, instead of imputing an average or minimum wage for housework and childcare to determine a value to the work, we use the actual local wage rate requested for these services from providers on online platforms. Applying this method to Austrian Time Use Survey data shows that the value of unpaid childcare and housework, had it been paid, would be equivalent to about 22% of the 2018 GDP.

Keywords: Unpaid work; Valuation; Domestic work; Housework; Care work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 G59 J13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11150-021-09545-y

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