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Until recently care and household labor was not reviewed in the economics. Since household labor does not produce a product for trade it was perceived as a difficult type of labor to measure the value. Because of such reason, labor within the private sphere is not included in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate and full-time house workers were not categorized as laborers. Thus, household labor was known as ‘invisible labor’ or ‘hidden work’. However, recently criticisms pointed out how exclusion of household labor within indexes do not fully represent the reality of our daily lives. For example, when full-time homeworkers provided care labor and get paid for such labor, the value of household labor gets included in the GDP index, thus changing existing statistics. Other critics also point out that household labor has been under valued till this date. Nancy Folbre’s point out that high-quality care labor has a positive effect not only to the care receiver but also to people around them, and that raising an healthy and happy child is like creating a public good, having a positive effect for everyone within the society. Based on such perspectives in 1985 the U.N. announced that women’s unpaid labor should be included in economy statistics of countries. Thus in 2018 Statistics Korea released it’s first measure of “Household Production Account” that included an economic calculation of household labor. According to Statistics Korea, in 2014 24.3% of South Korea’s GDP was accounted for household labor. Dividing into gender, Women produced 3 times more household labor value than men, indicating significant differences between gender in terms of time consumed. As following, South Korea’s government used the term “care economics” within the Social Security Master Plan (2019-2023). The government currently plans to increase market of care labor by supporting employment and accurate pricing of such value. Jiwon Jun, researcher of CTMS viewed that “Measuring the economic value of care labor will help increase women’s status and also add to the supply of more public infrastucture of care labor”.
PRESS
Until recently care and household labor was not reviewed in the economics. Since household labor does not produce a product for trade it was perceived as a difficult type of labor to measure the value. Because of such reason, labor within the private sphere is not included in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate and full-time house workers were not categorized as laborers. Thus, household labor was known as ‘invisible labor’ or ‘hidden work’. However, recently criticisms pointed out how exclusion of household labor within indexes do not fully represent the reality of our daily lives. For example, when full-time homeworkers provided care labor and get paid for such labor, the value of household labor gets included in the GDP index, thus changing existing statistics. Other critics also point out that household labor has been under valued till this date. Nancy Folbre’s point out that high-quality care labor has a positive effect not only to the care receiver but also to people around them, and that raising an healthy and happy child is like creating a public good, having a positive effect for everyone within the society. Based on such perspectives in 1985 the U.N. announced that women’s unpaid labor should be included in economy statistics of countries. Thus in 2018 Statistics Korea released it’s first measure of “Household Production Account” that included an economic calculation of household labor. According to Statistics Korea, in 2014 24.3% of South Korea’s GDP was accounted for household labor. Dividing into gender, Women produced 3 times more household labor value than men, indicating significant differences between gender in terms of time consumed. As following, South Korea’s government used the term “care economics” within the Social Security Master Plan (2019-2023). The government currently plans to increase market of care labor by supporting employment and accurate pricing of such value. Jiwon Jun, researcher of CTMS viewed that “Measuring the economic value of care labor will help increase women’s status and also add to the supply of more public infrastucture of care labor”.
PRESS