PRESS RELEASE

Household Work and The GDP

November 5, 1998, Halifax, Nova Scotia—What are the three largest sectors of the Nova Scotia economy? If you are hesitating, here is a clue: None of them are measured by the Gross Domestic Product, our single most important reference point for economic growth and progress.

The largest sector is food services within the household economy, the second is unpaid house cleaning and laundry, and the third is servicing household production through shopping for goods and services, each dwarfing their market equivalents. Altogether unpaid household works adds $8.5 billion in labour value alone to the Nova Scotia economy. The market value of household outputs is more than $10 billion annually.

Yet this vital economic contribution, essential to basic survival and quality of life, appears nowhere in our standard accounts. The rearing of children, the provision of food and the physical maintenance of dwellings are fundamental preconditions for a healthy market economy, without which workplace productivity, industrial output and quality of life would decline and social costs would rise.

Giving no value to this important unpaid work creates accounting absurdities and social inequities. Hire a housekeeper to wash your dishes and do your laundry, and it's counted as part of the economy. Marry your housekeeper, and the GDP goes down. Eating out is good for the economy. Home cooking has no value in our accounts. Pay someone to look after your child, and it registers as economic growth and progress. Look after your own child, and it's invisible, counted nowhere.

In fact, if these hidden shifts from the household to the market economy are taken into account, our GDP growth rates, which claim to represent increases in total production, are actually exaggerated. In fact, eating out or hiring a housekeeper or child care service is not increasing production, but merely shifting it to that part of the economy that's measured.

By measuring the value of unpaid household work, the Genuine Progress Index remedies this flaw and allows us to track important trends and shifts between the household and market economies. This is not a luxury but a necessity, since it not only allows more accurate estimates of our actual growth, but has a direct impact on social policy, and on assessments of our quality of life and our overall progress as a society.

The Economic Value of Unpaid Housework and Child Care in Nova Scotia (summary 22 pages) 104K PDF

The Economic Value of Unpaid Housework and Child Care in Nova Scotia (full report 123 pages) 844K PDF