Accounting for Unpaid Care Work in India-2019

In the ‘Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work’ report, 2018, estimates from 64 countries show that 16.4 billion hours per day were spent in unpaid care work. Women contributed to over three-fourths (76.2%) of this total. This unpaid labor is equivalent to 2.0 billion people working full-time (40 hours per week) without pay, representing 66.9% of the world's working-age population. The Indian System of National Accounts (SNA), like other countries, does not include the value of home-produced services in the national accounts production boundary. Especially in the case of an economy like India, where the labor force participation rate of women remains low and most of their work is invisible and unaccounted for, accounting for those home-produced services and creating extended SNA accounts hold extreme significance. The aim of this article is to estimate the ‘unpaid care work’ (household services unaccounted for in SNA) done by men and women both in time units and then monetise it to compute the economic value of this ‘unpaid care work’. Data Sources used for the study are the Time Use Survey 2019 and the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2019-20. The methodology followed in the creation of NTTA in this study was developed by Gretchen Donehower. Results show that men specialize in paid work, whereas women specialize in unpaid care work. Leisure and education seem to show very little gender variation in time use. There is a huge gender variation in the production age profiles of unpaid care work. The total time spent on indirect care is more than direct care for all ages. It is observed that the total time spent on unpaid work peaks from around 25 to 40 years of age for both genders.. While men spend significantly less time in indirect care activities than women, within indirect care activities, men spend more time in ‘do-it-yourself activities’ of improving, maintaining, and repairing own dwelling, personal and household goods, vehicles, pet care, and related activities. On the other hand, cooking is the indirect care activity that takes up the majority of women’s time.The hours spent on direct care is higher for women than men. Time spent in direct care increases rapidly around age 20 and peaks at age 27 by spending around 11 hours per week. There is no gender gap observed in consumption of unpaid care work. Calculating the net time transfers of unpaid care work points out that women are net givers of unpaid care work, and men are net beneficiaries of unpaid care work. To account for the value of unpaid care work activities produced in homes, following the methodology proposed by Donehower (2019), by applying the input pricing approach, we find out the value of unpaid care work by assigning wages to different unpaid care activities. Age profiles of various activities in monetary terms, rescaled using per capita GDP show that all monetary age profiles take up similar shape of curves as time age profiles. It also reveals that children at age 0 consume unpaid care work to level equivalent to 250 percent of per capita GDP. The prime contributors to household economy is women and at all ages they are the net givers of unpaid care work. While the results are descriptive, the scope this study puts forward is huge. The accounting for unpaid care work for 2019 is merely the first step to initiating much- focused but more inclusive interventions to approach unpaid care work production and the individuals involved in it. With revisions in the System of National Accounts, the importance of accounting of the unpaid household services, and thus creating extended accounts are paramount.