Blase Capital gender economics

What is the output generated by housewives, who manage the households, bring up children, act as caregivers to the family’s elders, and help increase the productivity of the male members? According to the policy-makers and statisticians, zero, zilch, nothing. But there are other ways to crack open this black box, and figure out how the so-called non-productive housewives contribute to the economy. India’s Time-Use Survey, 2024, found that women spend just under five hours on daily tasks such as cooking, cleaning, washing, and organising. Vidhu Shekhar, a professor in finance and economics, claims to have spent months trying to figure this out. In a recent piece, Shekhar adds the time spent on caregiving (children and elders), and adjusts it for participation rates across age-groups, and reaches a total of just under six hours a day. In a year, it amounts to more than 2,000 hours, without holidays, and matches the man-hours for a full-time salaried job.

The author uses three calculations, opportunity costs, generalist replacement, and specialist replacement to compute the so-called ‘Housewife GDP of India.’ As per the opportunity costs, the real question is to compute the monthly or annual income one can earn in a real job if one spends the same hours, and performs the same work. Using conservative wage benchmarks, the number that emerges is INR 22.81 lakh crore, or more than six per cent of the country’s current GDP. Of course, this is an understated assessment as it is based on the subjective analysis of what the housewife can earn in the organised labour market. However, the analysis suffers from a simple problem. In a country like India, especially in large parts of North India, even educated and skilled women do not wish to participate in the labour market. Indeed, they are excluded from the jobless data.

Under the generalist approach, the author asks a different question. What will be a household spend if the same work, or chores, is outsourced to a domestic house help? “Using the prevailing full-time domestic worker wages drawn from organised placement agencies and state-level minimum wage schedules, we arrive at INR 22.51 lakh crore, or 6.3 per cent of the GDP. Obviously, the figure is understated because a woman of the house spends more time to cook because of emotional and social reasons, as well as puts in more effort to take care of the children and elders. Unlike a babysitter, for example, a mother stays with the children for longer periods, and accompanies them to several places for tuition, play, entertainment, and school. On the flip side, a housewife can take a break whenever she wants, unlike a house help, and go slow in case she wishes to. The pressures are internal.

If one chooses the specialist method, which is the most pertinent, the calculations are different. In this, it is assumed that there is no uniformity to household chores. Different works require different skills and, hence, command different market prices. Some are cheap because of supplies, and some are expensive because the skills are difficult to get. Instead of a flat rate, therefore, the method inculcates and “constructs weighted hourly rates based on task-specific market rates, and the time shares reported. The result lifts the estimate to INR 38.12 lakh crore, or 10.67 per cent of the GDP. This represents a more comprehensive ‘full replacement’ ceiling among the time-based methods.” When the actual figures are extrapolated over a range, the figures come to INR 28-42 lakh crore under opportunity costs, INR 24-36 lakh crore under generalists, and INR 36-53 lakh crore under specialists.

Thus, in GDP terms, the range is 5-11 per cent, which is as much or more than the contribution of the IT sector (5-6 per cent). Obviously, the problems of counting the housewives’ contribution as zero in the national accounts has economic, social, and moral connotations. In the article, Shekhar talks about the “identity crisis” of the women who seek “validation elsewhere,” and “perceive their bargaining power within households” differently. Demographic dividends that India talks about are not implicit and automatic. “They depend on children who grow up healthy, educated, and emotionally secure. Behind most of those outcomes stands someone who invested years of attention and labour in making them possible.” If nations devalue this contribution, the realisation may come too late, as is the case with nations such as Japan, South Korea, and Italy. According to the author, “If the work of nurturing the next generation becomes invisible, financially unrewarded, and socially diminished, the incentives to do it weaken over time. And an economy without people is not an economy at all.” Demographics dividends work because of the work at homes.

Of course, one can look at the same issue in a counterintuitive, politically-unpalatable manner. It is because the household work is not monetised, or not seen in terms of income, output, GDP, and productivity that it is selfless, serious, committed, and obsessive. It is because the imperative to perform the non-paid tasks come largely from within, and not entirely imposed from outside that their value and worth is appreciated more by the performers and onlookers. Managing a house cannot be treated, and should not be treated like a job. It is much more than that and, hence, its worth cannot be computed.