Monetary valuation of unpaid work in Japan

1. Monetary valuation of unpaid work in Japan Susumu Kuwahara Research Fellow, ESRI, Japan December 2nd,2010

2. Background • In Japan, strong gender bias in housework, child care and elderly care/nursing has been regarded as a serious problem. • The need to measure the economic value of these activities and their burden on women in a form that allows comparison with other economic indicators is particularly strong.

3. Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action,The Fourth World Conference on Women Chapter 4 Strategic objectives and actions Paragraph 68 (b) Devise suitable statistical means to recognize and make visible the full extent of the work of women and all their contributions to the national economy, including their contribution in the unremunerated and domestic sectors, and examine the relationship of women’s unremunerated work to the incidence of and their vulnerability to poverty.

4. History 1995 The Fourth World Conference on Women. 1997 The first report of the monetary valuation of unpaid work in Japan, estimates on 1981, 1986, 1991. 1998 The second report, estimates on 1996. 2009 The third report, estimates on 2001, 2006.

5. From the point of “Measuring progress” Measurement of Economic Welfare (MEW) by Tobin, Nordhaus(1973) includes unpaid work. Net National Welfare (NNW,1978), Japanese version of MEW, includes unpaid work, too. The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) also maintain unpaid work as their components.

6. 1. Time Use Survey

7. Input Method • As the valuation method, we use only the input method. The formula for assessment is; • As a result, our assessment heavily relies on the time use survey. Value of unpaid work = per capita hours of unpaid work * hourly wage *population

8. STULA • The "Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities (STULA)" is conducted by the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. • The STULA aims to obtain comprehensive data on daily patterns of time allocation and leisure activities. • The STULA was first administered in 1976, and has been carried out every five years since then.

9. The STULA covers those items • Time use on a single day • Participation in leisure activities during the past year • Frequency of participation in leisure activities during the past year • The survey also contains a questionnaire on attributes of individuals and households.

10. Two types of questionnaires since 2001 • Questionnaire A adopts a pre-coding system (i.e. multiple choice style) . Used for around 76,000 households. • Questionnaire B uses diary method or after-coding system, which is more comparable to Harmonized European Time Use Surveys, HETUS, used for around 4,000 households.

11. 2. Scope and method of monetary valuation of unpaid work

12. Scope of unpaid work • "Unpaid work" defined here covers only unpaid work in which the service provider and the service beneficiary are separable (i.e., the service can be provided by a third party) and the service can be provided in the market. • Namely, the "third party criteria" is applied.

13. Type of unpaid work • Housework (cooking, cleaning, laundry, sewing and knitting, miscellaneous family affairs) • Elderly/nursing care • Child care • Shopping • Volunteer and social activities

14. The method of monetary valuation • As for time use, we have only STULA. • However, as for wages to be applied to each unpaid work, there are various options. • Opportunity-cost-method (OC) • Replacement-cost-method • Specialist approach (RC-S) • Generalist approach (RC-G)

15. Opportunity costs

16. Replacement-costs, Specialists Hourly wages, unit: yen

17. Replacement-costs, Generalists Unit:yen

18. 3. Valuation results using pre-coding system’s data

19. Assessment using Pre-coding system data set

20. Men’s share is extremely low Unit: billion yen

21. Married women’s unpaid work is close to paid work (OC method)

22. For men, as long as they earn, unpaid works continue to be minor (OC method)

23. 4. Valuation results using after-coding system’s (diary methods) data

24. After-coding system shows larger share of unpaid work 2006 figure, unit: billion yen

25. International Comparison * women only

26. 5. Comments and conclusion

27. What happened? • Gender researchers criticized our methodology. They insist that the wages used for women’s unpaid work might be too small compared with wages used for men, because the wage gap itself is the result of gender discriminations and using these data rather confirms problems than improves situations.

28. However, we think… • Despite several shortcomings in the valuation methods, the three reports of the monetary valuation of unpaid work were successful in galvanizing discussions among people on how to evaluate women’s role in the society and economy through unpaid work in Japan.

29. We will go ahead. • The Council for Gender Equality recommended that the research should be conducted on the measurement of the unpaid work, such as housework, child care, elderly care, nursing, and volunteer activities, as well as economic and social assessments of the child care and elderly care/nursing.

30. End Thank you for listening patiently