Does Housework Pay? A Product-Related Microeconomic Approach

Abstract

What is the economic value of goods and services produced by households for their own consumption? How much does this income in kind contribute to households' total income? What are the implications for social policy, welfare policy, fiscal policy, and family law? How does the market sector of the economy interact with the nonmarket household sector? Or, in other words, how, why, and when do productive functions and labor power leave the household for the market, and vice versa? What is the impact of economic development and increased monetarization on household production, on the distribution of the nation's labor power between the market and nonmarket sectors, on the nation's total income? In particular, how are women's economic roles affected by changes in the distribution of work and production between the market and nonmarket sectors? Economists, feminists, and policymakers have been increasingly concerned with these questions during the last decade.