PRESS RELEASE

Valuing Housework Key to Ending Child Poverty, Study Finds

November 5, 1998, Halifax, Nova Scotia—Measuring the value of unpaid housework and child care is key to meeting the Canadian Parliament's goal of ending child poverty in Canada by the year 2000, according to a new study by GPIAtlantic.

Despite the fact that non-employed single mothers put in an average 50 hours a week of productive household work, most live in poverty which is passed on to their children. Children of single mothers are 14% of all children in Canada, but 42% of all children in low income families.

In Nova Scotia more than 70% of single mothers live below Statistics Canada's low-income cut-off. And 27% of Nova Scotian children under the age of 12 live in poverty, the third highest rate in the country.

If the vital household work of these mothers were replaced for pay in the market economy it would be worth $450 a week or $23,450 a year. But because it appears nowhere in our economic accounting system, this work is not considered in the formation of social policy. The invisibility of household work and its lack of valuation account for the low policy priority accorded to those dependent on the household economy.

The data make clear why paid work is not currently an option for most single mothers. Lone-parent families spend an average of three times as much of their income on child care as two-parent families. And employed single mothers spend less than half the time of their non-employed counterparts directly caring for their own children.

The Genuine Progress Index views subsidized child care and other social supports as essential social infrastructure for the household economy rather than as “welfare", in the same way that taxpayers' money is used to support business investment and job creation in the market economy. Counting the economic and social value of unpaid work, says the GPI report, therefore provides the shift of view necessary to end child poverty in Canada.

N.S. Household Work Worth $8.5 billion a year, 51% of GDP Value

The GPI study found that Nova Scotians put in 941 million hours a year on domestic chores and primary child care, or 1,230 hours per adult. This is 25% more than the 707 million hours Nova Scotians work for pay. (Primary child care refers to time spent feeding, dressing, washing, reading to and otherwise directly relating with children, while not doing any other task).

If unpaid household work were replaced for pay at the average rates of $9.20 an hour paid to domestic workers in Nova Scotia and $7.58 paid for child care, it would be worth $8.5 billion a year, or 51% of GDP at factor cost, the second highest ratio in the country.

In fact, in both hours and economic value, the three largest sectors of the Nova Scotia economy are household food services, house cleaning and laundry, and servicing household production through shopping for goods and services.

In fact, the value of unpaid housework dwarfs its market equivalents. At a replacement cost value of $2.4 billion, unpaid household meal preparation and cleanup in Nova Scotia is worth three times the contribution of the entire food and beverage industry plus all accommodation and food services in the market economy. At $1.7 billion a year, the value of unpaid house cleaning and laundry is 12 times the size of the entire personal and household services industry in the market economy.

Work performed in households is more essential to basic survival and quality of life than much of the work done in offices, factories and stores, and is a fundamental precondition for a healthy market sector. If children are not reared with attention and care, and if household members are not provided with nutritious sustenance, workplace productivity will decline and social costs will rise. Physical maintenance of the housing stock, including cleaning and repairs, is also essential economic activity.

Yet this huge unpaid contribution registers nowhere in our standard economic accounts. When we pay for child care and house cleaning, and when we eat out, this adds to the GDP and counts as economic growth and “progress". When we cook our own meals, clean our own house and look after our own children it has no value in our measures of progress. Thus, shifts from the household economy to the market economy inaccurately register as growth, even though no additional production may be taking place. It is estimated that such shifts from unpaid to paid work overstate GDP growth by up to 0.8 percentage points a year.

“Time-Saving” Devices Have Increased Expenses but not Saved Time

Despite dramatic increases in household spending on “labour-saving” devices, Nova Scotians still put in an average of 23 and a half hours a week each on unpaid household work, a figure that has hardly changed in 35 years. In fact, full-time housewives still put in an average of 52 and a half hours a week on housework and primary child care, the same as their forebears at the beginning of the century.

After comparing expenditures on household equipment over time with hours spent cooking, washing up, house cleaning and doing laundry, the study finds that “labour saving” devices have not actually saved labour and that declining household size has made household production inefficient.

While personal disposable income has declined by 8% in the last 10 years, Nova Scotians are spending more than ever on household equipment. In the same ten years, the percentage of Nova Scotia households with microwaves has shot up from 35% to 87%, with dishwashers from 23% to 36%, and with automatic washing machines from 63% to 79%.

At the same time Nova Scotians are eating out more and hiring more paid child care than ever. Since restaurant prices and child care costs are rising faster than the overall consumer price index and since incomes are dropping, Nova Scotians are actually paying more for shifts from the household to the market economy. These trends have contributed to rising debt levels and the need of many families to work longer hours to keep up with expenses.

Along with increased spending, Nova Scotians are also spending more time shopping than ever before, about four and a half hours a week per adult. This is still an hour a week less than most other Canadians, but an hour and a half more than the French and more than twice as much as the Japanese.

The GPI study notes that the people of Denmark do about 8 hours a week less of housework and have 11 hours more free time per week than Canadians. This may be due in part to the more efficient cooperative housing arrangements with shared facilities that are common in Denmark, and which may be worth investigating as options here.

Reviewing the data and evidence, the report concludes that “stepping off the consumer treadmill” may be the difficult but necessary challenge facing Nova Scotian households that want to break the cycle of earning less, spending more, going deeper into debt, and working harder to pay for increased expenses. In the longer term, exploring methods of sharing household equipment and facilities may produce greater efficiencies in the household economy and save housework time.

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