IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcm/iesopp/27.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Valuation of Unpaid Help by Seniors in Canada: An Empirical Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • R. Robb
  • M. Denton
  • A. Gafni
  • A. Joshi
  • J. Lian
  • C. Rosenthal
  • D. Willison

Abstract

The demographic shift towards an older population in Canada has led to concerns about the increased share of society's resources required to provide health care, social asistance, public pensions, housing, etc. for this group. Preoccupation with this problem, however, has obscured the fact that seniors actively contribute to society in many ways, not the least of which is the provision of substantial amounts of unpaid time contributions of various sorts. Using data from the 1992 GSS on Time Use (cycle 7), this paper estimates the amount and market value (at replacement cost) of unpaid help - both informal help to others and formal help to organizations - of individuals age 55 and over. Travel time in connection with unpaid help is also analyzed. We find that participation rates and average hours are higher in the informal help sector relative to the formal sector both by age and by gender. The estimates also show that the market value of these contributions is substantial, and that seniors contribute a disproportionate share of the value of unpaid help contributed by all individuals over the age of 25.

Suggested Citation

  • R. Robb & M. Denton & A. Gafni & A. Joshi & J. Lian & C. Rosenthal & D. Willison, 1997. "Valuation of Unpaid Help by Seniors in Canada: An Empirical Analysis," Independence and Economic Security of the Older Population Research Papers 27, McMaster University.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcm:iesopp:27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/iesop/papers/iesop_27.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. -, 1996. "Economic survey of Canada, 1995," Oficina de la CEPAL en Washington (Estudios e Investigaciones) 28959, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    2. A. Joshi & M. Denton & A. Gafni & J. Lian & R. Robb & C. Rosenthal & D. Willison, 1997. "Evaluating Unpaid Time Contributions by Seniors: A Conceptual Framework," Independence and Economic Security of the Older Population Research Papers 26, McMaster University.
    3. Juster, F Thomas & Stafford, Frank P, 1991. "The Allocation of Time: Empirical Findings, Behavioral Models, and Problems of Measurement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 471-522, June.
    4. Francois Vaillancourt, 1994. "To Volunteer or Not: Canada, 1987," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 27(4), pages 813-826, November.
    5. O. Hawrylyshyn, 1978. "The economic nature and value of volunteer activity in Canada," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-71, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. A. Joshi & M. Denton & A. Gafni & J. Lian & R. Robb & C. Rosenthal & D. Willison, 1997. "Evaluating Unpaid Time Contributions by Seniors: A Conceptual Framework," Independence and Economic Security of the Older Population Research Papers 26, McMaster University.
    2. Imrohoroglu, Ayse & Merlo, Antonio & Rupert, Peter, 2000. "On the Political Economy of Income Redistribution and Crime," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(1), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Valerie A. Ramey & Neville Francis, 2009. "A Century of Work and Leisure," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 189-224, July.
    4. Fali Huang & Myoung-Jae Lee, 2010. "Dynamic treatment effect analysis of TV effects on child cognitive development," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(3), pages 392-419.
    5. Kan, Kamhon & Fu, Tsu-Tan, 1997. "Analysis of Housewives' Grocery Shopping Behavior in Taiwan: An Application of the Poisson Switching Regression," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(2), pages 397-407, December.
    6. Huffman, Wallace, 2004. "Marketizing U.S. Production in the Post-War Era: Implications for Estimating CPI Bias and Real Income from a Complete-Household-Demand System," Staff General Research Papers Archive 11987, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    7. Corneo, Giacomo, 2005. "Work and television," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 99-113, March.
    8. James J. Heckman, 2015. "Introduction to A Theory of the Allocation of Time by Gary Becker," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(583), pages 403-409, March.
    9. Cheal, David & Kampen, Karen, 1997. "Complementarity in the labor supply of husbands and wives," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 495-512.
    10. Maliar, Lilia & Maliar, Serguei, 2004. "Endogenous Growth And Endogenous Business Cycles," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(5), pages 559-581, November.
    11. Carlos Garriga, 2019. "Optimal Fiscal Policy in Overlapping Generations Models," Public Finance Review, , vol. 47(1), pages 3-31, January.
    12. Bridgman, Benjamin & Duernecker, Georg & Herrendorf, Berthold, 2018. "Structural transformation, marketization, and household production around the world," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 102-126.
    13. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Jungmin Lee, 2007. "Stressed Out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 374-383, May.
    14. W. Michael Hanemann, 1994. "Valuing the Environment through Contingent Valuation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 19-43, Fall.
    15. Zeni Mattia & Bison Ivano & Giunchiglia Fausto & Reis Fernando & Gauckler Britta, 2021. "Improving Time Use Measurement with Personal Big Data Collection – The Experience of the European Big Data Hackathon 2019," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 37(2), pages 341-365, June.
    16. Ellen R. McGrattan & Richard Rogerson & Randall Wright, 1993. "Household production and taxation in the stochastic growth model," Staff Report 166, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    17. Kuroda, Sachiko, 2010. "Do Japanese Work Shorter Hours than before? Measuring trends in market work and leisure using 1976-2006 Japanese time-use survey," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 481-502, December.
    18. Asimina Christoforou, 2005. "On the Determinants of Social Capital in Greece Compared to Countries of the European Union," Working Papers 2005.68, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    19. Heim, Bradley T. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2004. "Work costs and nonconvex preferences in the estimation of labor supply models," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(11), pages 2323-2338, September.
    20. Yongsung Chang & Andreas Hornstein, 2006. "Home production," Working Paper 06-04, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    seniors; valuing unpaid work; GSS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcm:iesopp:27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demcmca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.