Monetary valuation of unpaid
work in Japan
Susumu Kuwahara
Research Fellow, ESRI, Japan
December 2nd,2010
1
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.
2
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.
3
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.
4
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.
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1. Time Use Survey
6
Input Method

As the valuation method, we use only
the input method. The formula for
assessment is;
Value of unpaid work
= per capita hours of unpaid work * hourly wage *population

As a result, our assessment heavily
relies on the time use survey.
7
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.
8
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.
9
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.
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2. Scope and method of monetary
valuation of unpaid work
11
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.
12
Type of unpaid work





Housework (cooking, cleaning, laundry,
sewing and knitting, miscellaneous
family affairs)
Elderly/nursing care
Child care
Shopping
Volunteer and social activities
13
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)
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Opportunity costs
Oppotunity costs
3,000
2,500
yen
2,000
Women, 2001
Men, 2001
Women, 2006
Men, 2006
1,500
1,000
500
0
15- 20- 25- 30- 35- 40- 45- 50- 55- 60- 6519 24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64
age
15
Replacement-costs, Specialists
Hourly wages, unit: yen
Corresponding occupations
2001
2006
Cooking
average of chef and apprentice
chef
1,247
1,167
Cleaning
Building cleaning
998
976
Laundry
Laundry man
1,133
1,026
Sewing and
knitting
Sewing machine operator
879
887
Miscellaneous
family affairs
Janitor
1,341
1,198
Elderly/nursing care
Average of nurse assistance and
home helper
1,139
1,139
Child care
Child care workers
1,278
1,235
Shopping
Janitor
1,341
1,198
Volunteer work
Weighted average of medical,
social security, social welfare
and education
1,872
1,823
H
O
U
S
E
W
O
R
K
16
Replacement-costs, Generalists
Unit: yen
Year
Hourly wage
1996
880
2001
965
2006
973
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3. Valuation results using precoding system’s data
18
Assessment using Pre-coding
system data set
Monetary value of unpaid work/Nominal GDP
30
percent of GDP
25
20
ＯＣ
ＲＣ－Ｓ
ＲＣ－Ｇ
15
10
5
0
1981
1986
1991
1996
2001
2006
Year
19
Men’s share is extremely
low
Unit: billion yen
ＯＣ
Women
ＲＣ－Ｓ
Men
Women
ＲＣ－Ｇ
Men
Women
Men
1981
48,182
5,082
48,906
3,505
34,945
2,395
1986
63,678
8,150
62,304
5,446
45,192
3,844
1991
84,330
14,528
80,858
10,125
59,684
7,044
1996
98,104
18,011
92,349
13,384
67,396
8,673
2001
106,111
22,704
94,964
15,812
75,343
11,603
2006
106,120
25,749
89,997
17,486
76,805
13,824
(component ratio)
1981
90.5
9.5
93.3
6.7
93.6
6.4
1986
88.7
11.3
92.0
8.0
92.2
7.8
1991
85.3
14.7
88.9
11.1
89.4
10.6
1996
84.5
15.5
87.3
12.7
88.6
11.4
2001
82.4
17.6
85.7
14.3
86.7
13.3
2006
80.5
19.5
83.7
16.3
84.7
15.3
20
Married women’s unpaid work is close to
paid work (OC method)
Ratio of unpaid work, paid work =100,by age
Women
120
100
80
married
unmarried
separetd/divorced
60
40
20
85-
80～84
75～79
70～74
65～69
60～64
55～59
50～54
45～49
40～44
35～39
30～34
25～29
20～24
15～19
0
21
For men, as long as they earn, unpaid
works continue to be minor (OC method)
Ratio of unpaid work, paid work =100, by age
Men
120
100
80
married
unmarried
separetd/divorced
60
40
20
85-
80～84
75～79
70～74
65～69
60～64
55～59
50～54
45～49
40～44
35～39
30～34
25～29
20～24
15～19
0
22
4. Valuation results using aftercoding system’s (diary methods)
data
23
After-coding system shows larger
share of unpaid work
2006 figure, unit: billion yen
PrePercent
AfterPercent
coding
of GDP
coding
of GDP
OC
method
131.9
26.0
176.1
34.7
RC-S
method
107.5
21.2
140.5
27.7
RC-G
method
90.6
17.9
118.1
23.3
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International Comparison
Country
Japan
Korea
USA
New Zealand
Germany
Finland
* women only
Year
2006
2004
2004
1999
2001
2001
percent of
GDP
17.9-34.7
13.7-22.5*
18-58
39.0
43.4
36.1
25
5. Comments and conclusion
26
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.
27
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.
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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.
29
End
Thank you for listening patiently
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