Care Economy and Time Use 101

75-90 Minutes

Workshop 1: Foundations of Care Work & Economic Measurement

Target Audience: Gender economists, policy analysts, development practitioners, feminist researchers, and anyone working on unpaid work measurement

Prerequisites: Basic understanding of economics and gender concepts helpful but not required

Materials Needed: Calculators, time diaries, flipchart paper, Indian Time Use Survey data

Learning Objectives

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

Define the care economy and distinguish between paid and unpaid care work
Understand how traditional economic measurements exclude unpaid work
Interpret time-use survey data and its policy implications
Calculate the economic value of unpaid care work using different methods
Analyze gender disparities in time allocation using Indian data

Part 1: Understanding the Care Economy

20 minutes

‍‍ Two Stories from the Same Village

Rashida's Day: Wakes at 5 AM, fetches water (1 hour), cooks breakfast (1 hour), sends children to school, works in family shop (6 hours for ₹0), cooks lunch, does laundry by hand, helps children with homework, cooks dinner, puts children to bed. Total: 14 hours of work, ₹0 in GDP.

Rashida's Neighbor Meera: Wakes at 7 AM, checks WhatsApp, commutes to office job (1 hour), works at computer (8 hours for ₹15,000/month), commutes home, orders dinner on app, watches Netflix. Total: 10 hours of work, contributes ₹15,000 to GDP.

The Question: Who contributes more to society's wellbeing? Who gets counted in economic statistics? What happens if Rashida stops her unpaid work?

Defining the Care Economy

Visible Economy (GDP-counted)

Market transactions: Buying and selling for money
Formal employment: Jobs with contracts and salaries
Business profits: Enterprise income and investment
Government spending: Public sector activities
Examples: IT services, manufacturing, healthcare workers, teachers

Invisible Economy (GDP-excluded)

Household production: Cooking, cleaning, maintenance
Care work: Childcare, eldercare, caring for sick
Volunteer work: Community service, social activities
Subsistence production: Growing food for family consumption
Examples: Breastfeeding, home tutoring, caring for elderly parents

The Scale of India's Invisible Economy

Key Statistics from India's Time Use Survey (2019):

Women: Spend 299 minutes/day on unpaid domestic work vs. men's 97 minutes
Total unpaid work value: Estimated at 10-39% of GDP (₹15-58 lakh crores)
Rural women: Work 12% longer hours than urban women when unpaid work included
Care work: 50% of all household unpaid work time devoted to direct care activities

Types of Care Work

The Care Work Spectrum

Care work exists on a continuum from direct personal care to broader social reproduction activities that enable society to function.

Direct Care

Physical and emotional care for people

Examples: Feeding children, bathing elderly, nursing sick family members, emotional support

Indirect Care

Household activities that support care

Examples: Cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, household management

Community Care

Unpaid care work beyond the household

Examples: Volunteering at schools, caring for neighbors, community organizing

Paid Care Work

Market-based care services

Examples: Domestic workers, healthcare workers, teachers, childcare providers

Part 2: Time-Use Surveys - Making Time Visible

25 minutes

What Are Time-Use Surveys?

Time-use surveys collect detailed information about how people spend their 24-hour day, typically through diaries where participants record activities in 10-15 minute intervals over a week.

Data Collection Methods

Time diaries: Detailed 24-hour activity logs

Recall surveys: Questions about typical time allocation

Observation: Researchers document activities

Mobile apps: Digital time tracking tools

What Gets Measured

Primary activities: Main task being performed

Secondary activities: Simultaneous tasks (multitasking)

Location: Where activities take place

Co-presence: Who else is present/being cared for

Activity Classification

SNA Production: Activities that could be done by third party for pay

Non-SNA Production: Activities requiring personal relationship

Personal time: Self-care, leisure, learning

Community participation: Voluntary and social activities

🇮🇳 India's Time Use Survey Journey

First National Time Use Survey (2019): India finally joined 100+ countries collecting this data

Key Innovations:

Large scale: 1.38 lakh households across all states
7-day diary: Captures weekly variation in time use
Technology integration: Digital data collection
Disaggregation: Rural/urban, caste, religion, disability status

Policy Impact: First time India could accurately measure women's work participation rates including unpaid work

Time Diary Exercise (15 minutes)

Individual Activity: Create your own time diary for yesterday

Instructions: Fill in your activities from wake-up to sleep in 30-minute blocks. For each activity, identify:

Primary activity: Main thing you were doing
Location: Where you were
Care component: Were you caring for someone? Could someone else do this for pay?
Multitasking: What else were you doing simultaneously?

Time	Primary Activity	Location	Care Work?	Secondary Activity
6:00-6:30	_______	_______	_______	_______
6:30-7:00	_______	_______	_______	_______
7:00-7:30	_______	_______	_______	_______
...	...	...	...	...

Reflection Questions:

How many hours did you spend on unpaid care work?
How much multitasking did you do? (caring for someone while doing other tasks)
What activities would be invisible in traditional economic measurements?
How might your diary differ if you were a parent? A woman? Living in rural area?

Part 3: Economic Valuation of Unpaid Work

20 minutes

Why Value Unpaid Work?

Policy visibility: "What gets measured gets managed" - make women's work visible to policymakers
Economic accounting: More accurate measures of national wealth and wellbeing
Resource allocation: Inform decisions about public investment in care infrastructure
Gender equality: Quantify the unpaid work burden for advocacy and policy design

Valuation Methods

Replacement Cost Method

Logic: What would it cost to hire someone to do this work?

Example: Childcare work valued at domestic worker wage or professional nanny wage

Pros: Easy to understand and calculate

Cons: May undervalue skilled care work

Opportunity Cost Method

Logic: What income is foregone by doing unpaid work instead of paid work?

Example: Engineer doing childcare valued at engineer's hourly wage

Pros: Reflects individual's market value

Cons: Assumes everyone has paid work options

Output-Based Method

Logic: Value the output produced by unpaid work

Example: Home-cooked meal valued at restaurant price or nutritional content

Pros: Focuses on actual value created

Cons: Difficult to measure quality differences

Calculation Example: Valuing Childcare Work in India

Scenario: Priya spends 4 hours daily caring for her 2-year-old daughter (feeding, bathing, playing, supervision)

Method 1 - Replacement Cost (Domestic Worker):

Average domestic worker wage in urban India: ₹150/hour
Daily value: 4 hours × ₹150 = ₹600/day
Annual value: ₹600 × 365 = ₹2,19,000

Method 2 - Replacement Cost (Professional Childcare):

Professional childcare worker wage: ₹300/hour
Daily value: 4 hours × ₹300 = ₹1,200/day
Annual value: ₹1,200 × 365 = ₹4,38,000

Method 3 - Opportunity Cost:

Priya's market wage as teacher: ₹400/hour
Daily opportunity cost: 4 hours × ₹400 = ₹1,600/day
Annual opportunity cost: ₹1,600 × 365 = ₹5,84,000

Result: Same work valued between ₹2.2-5.8 lakhs annually depending on method!

Part 4: Gender Patterns in Time Use

10 minutes

Key Findings from India's Time Use Survey

Activity Type	Women (minutes/day)	Men (minutes/day)	Gender Gap
Unpaid domestic services	299	97	202 minutes (3.4 hours)
Care for household members	134	76	58 minutes
Employment and related activities	191	518	-327 minutes (5.5 hours)
Learning	36	61	-25 minutes
Social participation	33	90	-57 minutes

The "Double Burden" Reality: Even when women participate in paid work, they continue to shoulder primary responsibility for unpaid care work. Working women in India spend 243 minutes daily on unpaid domestic work vs. working men's 98 minutes.

Policy Implications

Infrastructure investment: Piped water, electricity, and transportation can reduce time burdens
Care services: Public childcare and eldercare can redistribute care work
Technology access: Household appliances and digital services can reduce time poverty
Social norms change: Education and awareness campaigns to promote equal sharing of care work
Flexible work policies: Enable both men and women to balance paid and unpaid work

Key Takeaway

The care economy represents a massive, invisible economic sector that sustains all other economic activity. Time-use surveys make this work visible, and economic valuation quantifies its enormous contribution. Gender equality in economic participation requires recognizing, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work.

Resources for Continued Learning

Foundational Texts:

"The Economics of Arrival" by Marilyn Waring (feminist economics classic)
"Counting for Nothing" by Marilyn Waring (on GDP and women's work)
"Care Economics: A Research Agenda" by Rania Antonopoulos
"The Care Manifesto" by The Care Collective

South Asian Context:

"Time Use Surveys in India" - Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation
"Unpaid Care Work in India" by Lekha Chakraborty
"Gender and Time Use in a Global Context" by Kimberly Fisher
"Care Economy: Insights from Indian Time Use Survey" by UN Women India

Data Sources:

India TUS Data: mospi.gov.in (Time Use Survey microdata)
International TUS: OECD Time Use Database
UN Women: Unpaid care work and time use statistics
ILO: Care economy country profiles

Next Steps in ImpactMojo:

Care Economy 102: Infrastructure, technology, and care policy design
Women's Economic Empowerment 101: Economic agency and control
Data Feminism 101: Critical approaches to economic measurement
Social Safety Nets 101: Care-sensitive social protection

This handout is part of the ImpactMojo 101 Knowledge Series
Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 • Free to use with attribution • www.impactmojo.in

For time-use analysis tools, valuation calculators, and Indian TUS datasets, visit the ImpactMojo platform.