“Unpaid work is macro-critical”

This week, the IMF released a new working paper. The brand-new head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, made a point of highlighting the paper in an event and a blog.

It’s important because it’s the first time a major policy-making institution has recognized the economic significance of unpaid work and the economic potential of reducing and rebalancing unpaid work undertaken by women. “Reducing and redistributing unpaid work is a macro-critical issue.” Since “macro” issues are the remit of the IMF, this represents an important, new recognition. The main reason that they see unpaid work as “macro-critical” is that unpaid work impedes female labor force participation and allocates resources (women’s labor) inefficiently. Women doing too much unpaid work means they are doing comparatively “low productivity” work when they could be doing something more valuable.

The work the paper is describing is domestic chores, mostly, rather than care work, although the authors recognize that the distinction is murky and probably under-reports care work. They find that 80 percent of unpaid work is domestic chores, rather than care work. So, the relevance of this analysis is somewhat dependent on these assumptions — especially that unpaid care work is not reduced by higher female labor force participation, nor by economic development.

“On average, women do more than two more hours of unpaid work per day than men. We find that as countries get richer, the hours people spend on unpaid work fall, particularly in domestic chores. Richer economies can afford “engines of liberation.” [introduction of new consumer durables such as dishwashers and vacuum cleaners as a force behind liberating women from housework.] In developing economies, unpaid work is often linked to subsistence requirements — providing food, shelter and caring for family members in a very labor-intensive fashion. As economies develop, improved household technologies, and the introduction of labor-saving consumer durable goods results in less time spent on domestic chores, which account for the largest share of unpaid work.”

The paper finds that unpaid work — if counted as if it were procured through markets — would increase a country’s GDP by an average of 34 percent with variations as high as 60 percent and as low as 10 percent. That’s lot of work. And a lot of value that isn’t counted. As an economy gets richer, women’s unpaid work tends to decline, and men’s tends to increase, although the gender balance remains very unequal regardless. Even in rich countries, women do 4.1 hours of unpaid work, which is 2 hours more than men in those countries, especially doing food prep and cleaning.

While women in richer countries do less unpaid work overall, this is not true for unpaid care work, as defined by the IMF (using their selected time-use surveys). Women do close to an hour of unpaid care work in rich countries and poor in their accounting.

Being single means doing less unpaid work, for both men and women. But hitching up means a lot more unpaid work for women. Having children yet more — each additional child adds 12 minutes of unpaid work per day. Women, of course, pick up most of this work. More education correlates with less unpaid work, as does full or part-time employment.

For 7 advanced economies, the authors were able to observe trends in unpaid work because there were quality time-use surveys available. They found that, since the 1960s, women are doing about 24 minutes more paid work and about half an hour less unpaid work per day. Men are doing 48 minutes less paid work and 36 minutes more unpaid work. So that’s progress! At this rate, men and women will be doing the same amount of unpaid work in about 80 years (in advanced economies).

The paper analyzes drivers for female unpaid work. Paid labor is a strong driver to reduce unpaid labor, while gender-biased laws and social attitudes result in higher levels of unpaid work.

The core of the paper is some modeling to see how big the economic bump would be if women’s paid work were encouraged, and unpaid work reduced. They use Norway as their model for values involved. I don’t know how credible, important, or big the result is. The paper finds that measures to increase women’s paid work and reduce unpaid could increase GDP by as much as 4 percent in more extreme cases (Pakistan, Japan). The more equal unpaid work is, the less gain there is in reforms. Interestingly, the authors find internet access as a significant driver for reduced unpaid work — perhaps through better integration into the gig economy and more paid work.

A few thoughts:

• the paper is primarily concerned with unpaid work, mostly domestic chores, and so it’s direct relevance to unpaid care work is somewhat limited. Many (most?) domestic chores are contributory and often overlapping with care work. But it’s hard to distill the specific implications for care and paper seems to view care work more or less as a constant, while other chores can be redistributed within households or reduced through technology or commercial provision. The quality of work — which would be a concern for care — is not really addressed.
• Being macro-focused, the IMF is of course interested in growth implication for reducing and redistributing unpaid work. That’s important, but probably not nearly as interesting for most of us who view the issue as one of gender-justice, human potential, and social choice. We want to reduce drudgery, regardless of the growth impacts and probably even if there were negative growth impacts. What is economic growth for, if not to reduce human misery, time poverty, and enhance our lives?
• Domestic chores are ripe for efficiency improvements. Hauling water, firewood, food prep, cleaning. Who would mourn if these were greatly reduced or even eliminated as daily requirements? But care is something else. Care requires time and attentiveness in order to be valuable to both care giver and care receiver. There are certainly areas where efficiency, scale, and automation can help. But most people don’t actually want to reduce the amount of time — and effort — in care. In fact, there’s plenty of data to show that people who can afford to (higher income), spend MORE time providing child care. So, while 80 percent of unpaid work is relevant, 20 percent is qualitatively different and needs special attention and probably different strategies.
• The paper points out that as economies shift towards services and away from agriculture and manufacturing, women’s work (comparative advantage) becomes more valuable, and men’s less so. I don’t understand the assumptions in saying this — and might argue that it’s an essentialist case on women’s value. Still it bears out that men are doing less paid work, while women are doing more. Women are doing less unpaid work, and men more. Some of this reflects structural transformations in economies.

Rachel Noble of Action Aid wrote an article about the working paper which is mixed in this evaluation. Noble makes valid points, but criticizes the paper as approaching unpaid work from “an entirely instrumentalist perspective.”

Given the IMF’s mandate is economic growth and macro-economics I see it as arguing that unpaid work is relevant to the IMF mandate, rather than instrumentalizing it.

She argues that IMF policies have exacerbated the issues around unpaid care work is exactly correct, which is why this working paper is super important for advocacy purposes. It offers a substantive counter to policies that would, in the future, undermine or hurt unpaid care workers. The paper says “unpaid work is macro-critical”. Therefor, we can and should use it to argue that impacts on unpaid work should be considered in any future policy interventions. That’s a huge advance for advocacy in this area, and the fact that I comes from within the IMF is incredibly helpful for advocacy purposes.

• October 16, 2019, updated 13 December.

ENDS///