Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper no. 1030-94.pdfVIP

Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper no. 1030-94 Time to Do the Chores? Factoring Home-Production Needs into Measures of Poverty Robin A. Douthitt Department of Consumer Science and Institute for Research on Poverty University of Wisconsin–Madison March 1994 Presented at the conference Poverty: Feminist Perspectives, University of British Columbia, School of Social Work, November 18–20, 1993. Abstract Currently, income is the only resource that the government takes into account when measuring poverty. But in order for a family to maintain an adequate standard of living, its members must not only have money, but the time to do certain kinds of work in the home: child care, food shopping, meal preparation, laundry, housecleaning, and the like. With this in mind, the author recalculates poverty rates using a method developed by Vickery (1977) in which time is factored in as a resource. She finds that poverty rates increase dramatically when time is factored in as a resource, because working parents, especially single parents, often do not have enough time to perform essential tasks. Data are from the 1985 American Time Use survey. Time to Do the Chores? Factoring Home-Production Needs into Measures of Poverty In 1977 Clair Vickery challenged the basis on which the federal government establishes its poverty lines and calculates adjusted poverty rates. In creating national poverty lines, the government considers the amount of income needed to buy basic food items suffic