India is likely to soon begin an unusual approach to measuring employment, that may also better capture women’s contribution to employment and the economy.
Last year, the International Labour Organisation came up with what India’s Chief Statistician T.C.A. Anant describes as a “substantial change in its conceptual framework” of work and employment. Among the suggestions that followed from it was for countries to explore “time-use surveys” — a detailed breakdown of working time hour-by-hour and day-by-day.
Following this, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation began to look into the “mechanics and logistics” of adding “time-use surveys” to India’s official statistical system.
In a time-use survey, an individual or representative of a household maintains a diary or is interviewed about the time he or she spent on various activities over a given time period. An expert group set up by the Ministry has submitted a list of activities the survey could measure. While Mr. Anant could not give The Hindu a deadline for introducing time-use surveys, the process is in motion, he said. “By better covering home production of goods, for instance, time-use surveys are expected to do a better job vis-à-vis the GDP,” Mr. Anant said.
In addition, by more accurately accounting for what a woman’s time gets spent on, time-use surveys could help explain India’s unusually low female work participation rates. “If the low work participation ratio is a problem, we need to first know what time is getting spent on to formulate a policy to address the problem,” Mr. Anant said.
Women's contribution:
Time-use surveys to help capture different types of work
Some statisticians argue that India’s official employment data, captured by the National Sample Survey Office, does not fully capture the different types of work Indians do, especially when it comes to women, who may perform economically productive work in the household but may not report it.
Indira Hirway, Director and Professor of Economics at the Centre for Development Alternatives in Ahmedabad, has long argued for India to include time-use surveys in its bouquet of official statistics.
Comparing the findings of an exploratory pilot study on time use carried out during 1999-2000 with the official employment statistics for that year, Professor Hirway and her colleague showed that “a time-use survey can provide improved estimates of, and better information on, the workforce in a developing country, particularly capturing women’s participation in informal employment, including subsistence production.”
