Unpacking unpaid labour in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper, with the help of national level Labour Force Survey (LFS) data of 2005 and 2010, analysed the key characteristics of unpaid worker and examined the changes that have occurred over time. In addition to descriptive statistics, it also applied multinomial logit model for comparing the effect of different socio-economic as well as household factors in choosing unpaid and paid employment. Our econometric estimation indicated that in addition to the conventional factors, a number of socio-economic factors, e.g. characteristics of household head and presence of older members as well as children in the household constrain participation in the main stream labour market. In order to understand the importance of unpaid work in household income, an attempt has also been made to estimate the unpaid contribution of unpaid work at household and the paper revealed that although the contribution/share of unpaid work performed by men is not that substantial, that of women is as high as 23 per cent of total household self employed income.