Gender Specialisation in the Market and the Home in South Africa, - PDF document

Gender Specialisation in the Market and the Home in South Africa, 2000-2010 Morn´ e Oosthuizen ∗ Development Policy Research Unit, School of Economics, University of Cape Town September 30, 2017 Abstract This paper presents estimates of household production across the lifecycle by gender for South Africa at two points in time, 2000 and 2010. It investigates the extent to which time allocations and gender specialisation across the lifecycle may have changed over the period, and provides monetary estimates of the value of household production. The analysis find evidence of significant gender specialisation in market and household production by males and females respectively, which has changed only slowly over the period. Change, where it has occurred, has tended to be amongst younger cohorts. Using various approaches to time spent in productive activities within the household, it is estimated that household production is equivalent to between 10 and 37 percent of GDP. Finally, the paper finds that demographic change between 1990 and 2060 will result in a ‘time dividend’ that will allow household producers either to reallocate time to market production or to leisure or self-care, or to increase the per child allocation of time in care activities. Draft. Please do not quote. XXVIII IUSSP International Population Conference 29 October - 4 November 2017 Cape Town, South Africa ∗ Email: Morne.Oosthuizen@uct.ac.za .

Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Methodology and Data 4 2.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1.1 National Transfer Accounts and National Time Transfer Accounts . . . . 4 2.1.2 Constructing Household Production-Related Age Profiles . . . . . . . . . 6 2.1.3 Determining the Value of Household Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.2 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3 Results 10 3.1 Allocation of Time across the Lifecycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.2 Gender Specialisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3.3 Household Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.4 Valuing Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 3.4.1 Generalist, Specialist and Opportunity Cost Wage Rates . . . . . . . . . . 18 3.4.2 Estimated Wage Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.5 Time Dividends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 4 Conclusion 26 5 Bibliography 27 A Appendix One 30

1 Introduction Over the past 20 years, a substantial body of evidence has been generated that documents pat- terns of production and consumption of market goods and services for rich and poor countries around the world. Using the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology, the relation- ships between age and production, and age and consumption have been documented for at least one point in time for more than 80 countries around the world with a combined population of approximately 6 billion in 2017. NTAs are, though, explicitly linked to national accounts, with age profiles of the various economic flows adjusted to ensure compatibility with national accounts aggregates. As a result, NTAs are constrained to measuring productive activities that are included within national ac- counts; specifically, these are market goods and services, and non-market goods. Non-market services, which includes activities such as cooking, cleaning and care within the household, are not included in national accounts estimates of production and are therefore excluded from NTAs. In many respects, this omission is not a major issue. However, it does cause issues when trying to analyse differences in the nature of support systems available to men and women in a given society. There are various reasons to expect that these systems may differ from each other in significant ways. Girls and boys may differ in terms of their access to education or health, and may be required by their families to enter the labour force at different ages. In their working ages, women may be less likely to find employment and may find themselves in less secure, lower paying employment than men. During their reproductive ages, many women spend extended periods of time outside of the labour market, which may aggravate their relative disadvantage in terms of employability upon their return. These differing employment histories may result in lower employment-based pensions for women post-employment relative to men. However, many of these issues are related to market production and the relative wages that women are able to earn, features that would be evident in gender-disaggregated NTAs. A key outstanding issue is the specialisation by women and girls in unpaid services within the home, referred to here as household production. NTA’s direct link to national accounts means that gender-disaggregated NTAs will underestimate total production; the extent of specialisation by women and girls in these activities will determine the extent to which this underestimation varies by gender. To address this issue, the NTA methodology is complemented by National Time Transfer Accounts (NTTA), which use time-use data to derive estimates of non-market or household production across the lifecycle by gender. This paper presents estimates of household production across the lifecycle by gender for South Africa at two points in time, 2000 and 2010. It investigates the extent to which time allocations across the lifecycle may have changed over the period. It describes the degree to which there is gender specialisation in different activities in South Africa. Using a variety of possible wage rates, the time spent in household production by men and women in the two years is valued in Rands, in order to provide a sense of the magnitude of total household production. Finally, the paper assesses the way in which future demographic change is expected to impact on the supply 3

of and demand for household production in South Africa. 2 Methodology and Data 2.1 Methodology 2.1.1 National Transfer Accounts and National Time Transfer Accounts The National Time Transfer Accounts methodology builds on the National Transfer Accounts methodology, which is used to analyse the generational economy. The generational economy is defined as “(1) the social institutions and economic mechanisms used by each generation or age group to produce, consume, share, and save resources; (2) the economic flows across generations or age groups that characterize the generational economy; (3) explicit and implicit contracts that govern intergenerational flows; (4) the intergenerational distribution of income or consumption that results from the foregoing” (Mason and Lee, 2011 b , p.7). The conceptual origins of the NTA framework lie in the work of Samuelson (1958), Diamond (1965), Arthur and McNicoll (1978), and Willis (1988). However, work by Lee (1994 a ; 1994 b ) is recognised as the genesis of NTA. National Transfer Accounts are comprised of profiles of economic flows by single-year age cohorts, from age 0 to the very oldest (usually a combined 90+ age cohort). These flows are important in that they “reflect a fundamental feature of all societies: the economic lifecycle” (Mason and Lee, 2011 a , p.55). For any individual, inflows must equal outflows and the following identity holds: Y l + Y A + τ + = C + τ − + S (1) In other words, individuals can receive resource inflows in the form of labour income ( Y l ), asset income ( Y A ) and transfer inflows ( τ + ), and consumption ( C ), transfers to others (i.e. transfer outflows, τ − ) and savings ( S ) represent the three ways in which these resources can be used. This identity can be rewritten as: C ( x ) − Y l ( x ) = τ + ( x ) − τ − ( x ) Y A ( x ) − S ( x ) + (2) � �� � � �� � � �� � Lifecycle Deficit Net Transfers Asset-Based Reallocations � �� � Age Reallocations where x represents a given cohort’s age. Consumption, transfers and asset-based reallocation are all further disaggregated into public and private flows, while private transfers are disaggregated into interhousehold and intrahousehold flows. Transfers are flows characterised by a lack of an “explicit qui pro quo”, while asset-based reallocations “realize inter-age flows through inter- temporal exchange” (United Nations, 2013). There are various reasons to expect that the support systems for men and women throughout the lifecycle may differ from each other in significant ways. Girls and boys may differ in terms 4