CALCULATING AUSTRALIA'S GROSS HOUSEHOLD PRODUCT: MEASURING THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF THE HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY 1970-2000

This paper presents estimates for a thirty year period of Australia’s Gross Household Product (GHP), the economic value added by unpaid labour and the households own capital. In 2000 GHP was estimated to be worth $471 billion. Gross Market Product (GDP minus the imputed value of owner-occupied housing) was worth$604 billion in 2000. The household economy was nearly 80 per cent of the size of the market economy in 2000. More importantly, the GHP is nearly half (44%) of total economic activity (Gross Economic Product). The household economy absorbs more labour time than the market economy. In 2000 Australians spent about 15 per cent more time on non-market activities than market ones. The failure of statistical organisations to provide official estimates of the household economy (GHP) means that almost half of the total valuable economic activities undertaken by Australians are ignored by economists and policy makers.

Estimating household production outputs with time use episode data

It is not widely recognised that diary-based surveys of time use contain data not only on ‘input’ time but also on ‘output’ time. The diaries record episodes of time use throughout the day showing activities that can be categorised not only as household production input time, such as preparing a meal, but also household output (or consumption) time such as eating a meal. Harvey and Mukhopadhyay (1996) seem to have been the first to use the methodology of counting output episodes from time use surveys to estimate and value household production outputs. Using episode data from the 1992 Canadian time use survey, they counted the number of meals, the hours of child care and the nights of accommodation. Our paper explores the application of this methodology to the episode data from Australian time use surveys. We extend the outputs to include episodes of transport provided by households. This is in accord with the Eurostat recommendation to include transport as a final output in the preparation of satellite accounts of household production.Household production outputs, time use surveys, episode data, gross household product, satellite accounts of household production, accommodation, meals, child care, clean clothes, transport