To Value Household Work

Abstract: The national accounts, and specifically GDP, are often taken as a measure of welfare and increased wellbeing in society. However, in reality these measures are not created for measuring welfare, and even in measuring productions there are often significant problems. Furthermore, problems arise when we try to compare national accounts between countries, or between different periods. During the decade I looked at, labour force participation increased with close to 6 points in total for Germany, while the corresponding number for Sweden was 1 point. This thesis aims to look at exclusion of household production from the national accounts. My purpose was to look at how large household production is in relation to GDP and NNI, and how growth during 2000-2010 in Sweden, and 2002-2012 in Germany, change when we add imputed numbers for household production. The results I find are, that for my most conservative estimate household production made up around 20 % of GDP for Germany, while for my largest estimates it made up around 49-60 % of German GDP, and around 40 % of Swedish GDP with NNI numbers on average being 10 % higher. In my conclusions, I state that it is possible, given the data present, that part of Germany’s increase in GDP and NNI can be explained by an increase in participation rate of the labour force, and constitutes a partial transfer of production from the household into the market, rather than being an increase in production. While at the same time, there are far fewer indications this is the case for Sweden. This due to that labour participation has remained largely unchanged, and while time spent on household production has decreased, it has done so far less than in Germany. However, any results must be interpreted with care, as estimates differ largely based on imputation method chosen.