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Unpaid work, across the world, is an area that has generally been neglected by economists as well as development actors. Yet the amount of unpaid work done and the manner in which its burden is distributed have important implications for the well-being of individuals and households, as well as for any economy’s growth and dynamism.

This book establishes that there is an urgent need to measure unpaid work and incorporate it in analysing the critical concerns of an economy. As a first step, it focuses on gathering quality statistics and methodologies required to conduct time-use surveys in moving towards integrating unpaid work in policymaking. Assessing various time-use surveys from the global South Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Africa the book moves on to address critical socioeconomic concerns such as poverty alleviation, employment, gender equality, women’s empowerment, as also the overall well-being and development of a nation.

With in-depth theoretical foundations and empirical analysis, it builds the case for aggregating quality time-use data for sustainable development of the global South.

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction/Indira Hirway. Part I. Producing Quality Time-Use Statistics: Issues Related to Methodology and Harmonization of Concepts and Methods. 2: Assessment of concepts and methods used in selected countries in ESCAP region/Indira Hirway. 3. Time-use surveys in Latin America, 2005-2015/Valeria Esquivel. 4.Time-use surveys in Africa: problems and prospects/Jacques Charmes. 5. Measurement of total working time with a gender perspective: development of time-use surveys in Latin America/Sonia Montano. Part II: Analytical Tools for Addressing Critical Concerns. 6. Challenges to Measuring (SNA) Workforce/Labour Force in Global South/Indira Hirway. 7. Time use and job search among the unemployed and underemployed/Maria Sagrario Floro and Hitomi Komastu. 8. The measurement of time and income poverty/Ajit Zacharias. 9. Time poverty: a contributor to women’s poverty? Analysis of the time-use data in Africa/Omar Ismael Abdourrahman. 10. Public job-guarantee programmes: The economic benefits of investing in social care case studies of South Africa and the United States/Rania Antonopoulos and Kijong Kim. 11. Integrating time use in gender budgeting/Lekha Chakraborty. 12. Trade liberalization and unpaid work: integrating unpaid work into macroeconomic policies/Indira Hirway. Index. Glossary.