Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Value of Time
Pages 23-25 in "Wired for Innovation" mention using time as a way to measure activity not captured in traditional economic metrics; this brought to mind the work of feminist economists (e.g. Marilyn Waring: "Counting for Nothing"), who have called for decades for alternative ways of measuring activity. In many less-developed countries, the majority of women are not in the workforce but there is certainly value in the time they spend preparing food, cleaning and raising children, but this is not captured in measurements like GDP. The difficulties in measuring the value added by technological advancements was an unexpected parallel to some of my earlier studies.
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I like your comment, Anne. It's not just in less-developed countries. The years I spent right here in the USA raising children, preparing food, managing family finances, running two girl scout troops, volunteering at church, etc, was certainly of value. However, not only is it not reflected in the GDP, but it's not valued very highly by recruiters despite the fact that it is much like running a small business. There was a surprising amount of IT involved as well!
ReplyDeleteSally - I would certainly agree that the issues I mentioned above are present in all countries. Thanks for your comments.
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