An Alternative Valuation Method for Household Production using American Time Use Survey Data

Current techniques for valuing household production based on market wages provide biased estimates of the value of household providers’ services. We present an alternative valuation method for valuing the household services performed by non-specialists. We use data on market wages as a function of occupation-specific experience and combine them with data from the American Time Use Survey to value the output of non-specialist, non-market providers. We demonstrate the potential for this approach using two occupations, Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners and Maintenance Workers. A discussion of existing techniques is included.