Lights and Shadows of Household Satellite Accounts: The case of Catalonia, Spain

Abstract

The construction of Household Satellite Accounts (HSAs) to value household production is not a new object of study. However, as their use has widened, research efforts have focused on resolving technical aspects of valuation assessment and far less attention has been paid to the underlying conceptual aspects. The purpose of this study is to contribute to improving the HSA as an analytical tool. Two approaches are proposed, drawing on existing data from Catalonia, Spain. The first approach involves incorporating the analysis of time as a key component of HSAs, making it possible to explore aspects of unpaid housework without the influence of monetary valuation. The second develops a new methodology that captures information on both housework and market work, overcoming some of the limitations of current databases used in the calculation of HSAs and allowing an analysis of the various interrelationships that exist between the two types of work.

Keywords:

• Household production
• satellite accounts
• time use

Notes

¹ Notable examples of estimations made by statistics offices at a national level include Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2000), Canada (Statistics Canada 2003), the United States (Bureau of Economic Analysis 2005), Finland (Statistics Finland 2006), New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand 2001), the Netherlands (Statistics Netherlands 2004), and Spain (Spanish National Statistics Institute 2008).

² Housework includes unpaid domestic work (such as ironing, washing and cleaning, and cooking) and also unpaid care work provided by members of the household.

³ Spain, with 45,828,172 inhabitants, is divided into seventeen regions known as autonomous communities as well as the cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the African continent. Catalonia, located in the northeast of Spain, is the second largest autonomous community by population (7,290,292), and it accounts for the greatest percentage of GDP, at nearly 19 percent (data refer to January 2009; Spanish National Statistics Institute 2009).

⁴ A limited number of HSAs have integrated an analysis of time use: the ones prepared by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2000), Statistics New Zealand (2001), and particularly Statistics Netherlands (2004).

⁵ The definition of household production that is typically used in preparing HSAs is the “third party criterion” put forward by Margaret Reid (1934). Today this definition is under fire as too restrictive, because it does not allow the inclusion of subjective and relational aspects as well as the management of a household (see, for example, Nancy Folbre and Michael Bittman 2004; Nancy Folbre 2006).

⁶ Curiously, jobs exist in many societies in which part of the work time that is socially recognized and remunerated involves “being on call” (for example, firefighters).

⁷ The labor force survey is an employment survey that has been coordinated across International Labor Organization (ILO) member nations.

⁸ Catalonia constructed its HSA according to European regulations (Eurostat 2003). For more information on the methodological aspects of the HSA for Catalonia, see Cristina Carrasco and Mònica Serrano (2007). The Time Use Survey 2002–2003 (Spanish National Statistics Institute 2004a) was the first survey of its kind to be conducted in Spain. It was carried out between September 2002 and October 2003; interviews were administered to all household members over the age of 10. The activity diary, broken into 10-minute intervals, covered 24 hours, from 6.00 a.m. of the designated day until 6.00 a.m. of the following day; the diary captured information on primary and secondary activities. In Catalonia a total of 3,362 private households were interviewed.

⁹ The concept of “social average time” used in some of the tables refers to the average for the entire reference population, whether or not they take part in the activity. By contrast, the concept of “average time per participant” refers to the average only of that portion of the population actually participating in the activity.

¹⁰ The low frequency of time devoted to caregiving as a secondary activity in the time-use surveys limits the variable to being considered only as indicative.

¹¹ See also Marilyn Waring (1988, 2005); Nancy Folbre (1991, 1994); Nancy Folbre and Barnet Wagman (1993); UN-INSTRAW (1995); Himmelweit (1995, 2002); Nancy Folbre and Michele Pujol (1996); Sue Holloway, Sandra Short, and Sarah Tamplin (2002); Andrew Harvey and Arun Mukhopadhyay (2005).

¹² In addition to the problems related to the wage rate, the literature also poses other problems of a technical nature (Johanna Varjonen, Eeva Hamunen, Taru Sandström, Iiris Niemi, and Hannu Pääkkönen 1999; Eurostat 2003), which, although requiring discussion, are not relevant to the aim of this paper.

¹³ For example, a 40-year-old mother will likely cook a better meal than her 18-year-old son or daughter, although the time spent is valued at the same wage rate. The NA-LFS does not entirely solve this problem, but it incorporates improved elements such as the following, more specific questions: “How long have you performed the activity?” and “How would you rate your skill at this activity on a scale of 1 to 10?” Advances in methodology will be necessary to overcome this limitation more fully.

¹⁴ Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones de 1994 (CNO-94) corresponds to the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88).

¹⁵ In Spain, Clasificación Nacional de Actividades Económicas de 1993 (CNAE-93, Rev. 1) corresponds to the International Standard Industrial Classification of all Economic Activities (ISIC Rev. 3.1.) of the UN Statistics Division.

¹⁶ The figure is similar to data for other countries: Norway 1990 (38 percent); Australia 1997 (43 percent); New Zealand 1999 (39 percent); the UK 1999 (44 percent); and Finland 2001 (41 percent; Carrasco and Serrano [2007]).

¹⁷ This method was first proposed and applied by Duncan Ironmonger and Evelyn Sonius (1989); Iulie Aslaksen, Trude Fagerli, and Hanne A. Gravningsmyhr (1995); and Marjut Vihavainen (1995).