Time-use and the Comprehensive Accounting of Social and Economic Activity
Author(s)
Gershuny, Jonathan
Abstract
This paper contributes to the extension of the system of national accounts to include more than just “the economy”. It starts from a peculiarly general conceptualisation of “technologies” as “modes of provision for human want”. Extended accounts based on this definition can include, not just paid work, and unpaid work within households and community groups, but also the various forms of consumption specifically associated with each of the modes of provision. If we produce a list of categories such that all sorts of human want relate to one or other element of the list, then all production (paid and unpaid) and all consumption activities can be associated with one or other of the modes of provision for some element in the list, thus producing a comprehensive accounting of all social and economic activity. Previous approaches have used time-diary information, placing money values on the unpaid work. But there is no market price for such labour, because there is no market. This paper moves instead from the money value of the paid labour to the labour time (valued at market prices) embodied in conventional output measures, which are then combined with measures of unpaid labour and consumption time. Time, unlike money, is finite; the resulting accounts describe the distribution of the time in a society’s “Great Day” devoted to each of the various categories of want. They use nationally representative “time budget” surveys for the UK, from 1961, 1984-7 and 2001, providing empirical estimates of the changing time-balances of work and leisure activities, related to different sorts of basic and luxury wants, over a forty year period.
