WUNRN
UNRISD - UN Research Institute
for Social Development
THE STATISTICAL EVIDENCE ON CARE
& NON-CARE WORK - 6 COUNTRIES
Argentina,
Nicaragua, India, Republic of Korea, South Africa, Tanzania
"For
all countries, the mean time spent on unpaid care work by women is more than
twice that for men."
Direct Link to Full 62-Page UNRISD
Document:
______________________________________________________________________
The
Statistical Evidence on Care and Non-Care Work - Six Countries
Author(s):
Debbie Budlender
Project Title: Political
and Social Economy of Care
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 economists, 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 six countries describes the source of
the data used for analysis in each of these countries. This is important to the
extent that some of the variation 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 tables compiled for each country. These graphs
give a sense of the variation in male and female levels of engagement in, and
the 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 tends 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.
The paper confirms some constant basic gender patterns in engagement in
System of National Accounts (SNA) work, and unpaid care work, across the six
countries. For all countries, the mean time spent on unpaid care work by women
is more than twice that for men. The gender gap is most marked in India, where
women spend nearly 10 times as much time on unpaid care work than men.
Conversely, men tend to spend more time than women on SNA work across all
countries. Again, India has the largest gender difference, with men spending
nearly two and a half times as much time on SNA work as women.
When SNA and unpaid care work are combined, women are found to do noticeably
more work than men in all countries. The volume of the total work done by men
ranges from 74 per cent of the total amount done by women in South Africa to 94
per cent of the amount done by women in India. When the distribution of men and
women in terms of time spent on unpaid care work is examined, there are far
more men than women who do not do this type of work at all. Among those who do,
there is strong clustering at points representing short times spent on this
work. In contrast, there is high variability among women in the amount of unpaid
care work done and, as a consequence, a notable level of inequality, with some
women spending considerable time on it.
Tobit estimations confirm that, as expected, being male tends to result in
doing less unpaid care work across all countries. This factor has the greatest
influence (largest coefficient in absolute terms) of all tested factors in
every country except Argentina. For all countries, having a (young) child in
the household tends to increase the amount of unpaid care work done. The
coefficient for age is always positive, while that for age squared is negative.
This suggests an initial increase in the amount of unpaid care work done with
increasing age, followed by a decrease. The amount of unpaid care work tends to
decrease with increases in income, while being employed tends to decrease the
amount of unpaid care work done in all countries except Tanzania. For most
countries, being married tends to increase the amount of unpaid care work done.
Overall, there are at least as many differences as similarities across
countries. In particular, there are significant variations in the “size” of
care work done in the sense of the level of participation rates, average times
spent by women and men on different activities, and absolute and relative differences
between women and men. Some of these reflect methodological differences in
terms of instruments, number of days covered, classification schemes, age group
covered and so on. However, the methodological differences cannot explain away
more than a small proportion of the variations.
The differences between countries in this paper thus confirm that gender is not
“god-given” and immutable. Instead, gender is something that varies across
countries and cultures. For policy purposes, however, what happens within a
particular country is as important, if not more so, than cross-country
comparisons. This paper, as well as the individual country research papers,
present cross-sectional comparisons of different groups within a particular
country at a particular point in time. Longitudinal comparisons of patterns of
time use within a particular country are also needed. Countries therefore need
to conduct time use surveys at regular intervals, using a standard methodology
that allows reliable comparisons over time. This would be similar to the
current practice of ongoing labour force surveys, although time use surveys
would not need to be conducted as regularly as some labour force surveys
because time use patterns are unlikely to shift as quickly.