MEASURING THE VALUE OF HOUSEHOLD OUTPUT: A COMPARISON OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT APPROACHES

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Abstract
Economists have traditionally measured household production (HP) by multiplying hours spent by a wage rate. This practice tends to misstate HP by ignoring the contribution of capital and entrepreneurship and by making questionable marginal productivity assumptions. Quantifying the HP and multiplying by the market value per unit avoids these problems and yields a value estimated by the same method as GNP. We measure HP by this direct method and find HP to be 44 percent more than that obtained by the traditional approach. We further make average productivity comparisons between firms and households for typical HP items.