The Statistical Evidence on care and non-care work across six Countries

Unpaid care work - the housework and care of persons that occurs in homes and communities of all societies on an unpaid basis - is an area that has generally been neglected by economist, as well as by many development actors. Yet the amount of unpaid care work carried out, the way that the burden of this work is distributed among different actors, and the proportion and kinds of care work that are unpaid or paid, have important implications for the well-being of individuals and households, as well as for the economic growth and well-being of nations. This paper summarizes and compares findings from analysis of time use data from Argentina, Nicaragua, India, the Republic of Korea, South Africa and Tanzania for a project of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) on Political and Social Economy of Care. The project as a whole aims to explore the way in which care - and care of persons in particular - is provided by the institutions of family/household, state, market and community, and by the people within these institutions. The analysis presented in this paper focuses on the quantitative aspects of unpaid care provided by individuals in households. The paper consists of nine sections, as follows: Key concepts introduces time use-related concepts which are utilized in later discussion in the paper. Background to the surveys in the is countries describes the source of the date used for analysis in each of these countries. This is important to the extent that some of the various across countries reported in the paper might reflect methodological, rather than "real", differences between the countries. Basic gender patterns presents a set of graphs derived from standardized sex-disaggregated tales compiled for each country. These graphs give a sense of the variation in male and female levels of engagement in, and he time spent on, employment-related work, unpaid care work and care of persons more narrowly defined. Distribution of time spent on care explores the distributions that lie behind the averages that usually form the basis of time use analysis. The various country graphs confirm that while the amount of time spent by men on unpaid care work and person care ends to cluster at the lower end of distribution, there are substantial numbers of women who spend long hours on care work. The Tobit estimations reports on the econometric analysis conducted in each of the countries to determine the main factors influencing the time spent on unpaid care work and person care across the six countries. Gender combined with other factors discusses differences and similarities across countries in the way gender interacts with other factors explored in the Tobit estimations in determining how much care is undertaken by different individuals,. In particular, it looks at how time spent differs between women and men in each of the countries in relation to the presence of young children in the household, employment status and age. The care dependency ratio presents country results for a care dependency ratio proposed by the project as an indicator of care demand, in contrast to other sections that focus primarily on the supply of care. The monetary value of unpaid care work discusses various approaches to assigning value to unpaid care work, and compares the results with a range of macroeconomic indicators for the six countries. These indicators include gross domestic product (GDP), paid work, government revenue and government expenditure on social services. The conclusion offers some final remarks on the relevance of the findings.