Bangladesh's recent decision to include women's unpaid domestic and care work in its GDP calculations marks a major symbolic victory for feminist economists, who have long argued that unpaid labour is essential to economic and social life. We discussed this with Nancy Folbre, Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
In a landmark policy decision, Bangladesh’s interim government has announced that beginning in the 2025–26 fiscal year, women’s unpaid domestic and care work will be officially included in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations.
To unpack the implications of Bangladesh’s decision from a feminist economic perspective, we spoke with Nancy Folbre, Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst – the same institution that will host this year’s International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) annual conference, taking place from 3 to 5 July 2025. Folbre is also the Director of the Programme on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). Her work sits at the intersection of political economy and feminist theory, with a focus on the economic value of care work and the inequalities that shape it. She is currently completing a new book, Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First, forthcoming from University of California Press in 2026.
Bangladesh has recently taken a significant step by including unpaid domestic and care work in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates. In your view, what is the significance of this move, particularly in terms of making women’s economic contributions more visible?
I salute Bangladesh for stating publicly that it will include an estimate of the value of unpaid household work in GDP. This increases the pressure on other national statistical agencies to make similar commitments. As feminists have argued for more than a century, the economic value of unpaid work is obvious, because if unpaid care providers – mostly women – withheld their services, others would have to be paid to provide them. However, the assumption that unpaid work is “unproductive” simply because it isn’t directly exchanged for money is deeply embedded in both conventional economic theory and national income accounts. Decades of concerted effort have been devoted to challenging this assumption, by insisting on the implementation of detailed time use surveys that quantify hours of unpaid work and, next, providing estimates of what it would cost to replace it. Published academic research based on a recent Bangladesh time-use survey laid the foundation for government action.
Recognising unpaid care work in GDP estimates is a powerful symbolic step, but what are the limits of this approach?
Many countries (including the US and France) now provide estimates of the national value of unpaid work in so-called “satellite accounts” that can be used to supplement the conventional measure of GDP. However, these estimates are couched in highly technical language, seldom get much publicity, and are largely ignored by policy makers. As a result, there’s a big “so what?” problem – people often ask, “What difference does it make?”. The answer is, very little, unless activists use it to press for more public support for the unpaid work of producing, developing and maintaining human capabilities.
A key issue in measuring unpaid work lies in the methodology – particularly the choice of valuation method, such as the replacement cost wage.[1] Why does this choice matter so much, and why, in addition to celebrating the national estimates, we should start pointing out their inconsistencies – and their implications?
The methodology is basically simple, because the value of unpaid household production is largely driven by the value of unpaid work, calculated by multiplying the total hours of unpaid work times an hourly wage rate – usually the wage rate of a worker near the bottom of the wage distribution, such as a “general housekeeper” or “domestic servant”. Much depends on how unpaid work is measured – most surveys count only “active” care of young children, people who are sick or disabled, and the frail elderly. However, care responsibilities (distinct from “activities”) often require care providers to be present and “on-call”, in case active care is required. For instance, in most countries, leaving an infant or young child unattended for a long period of time is considered child abuse.
And when it comes to assigning a monetary value to the unpaid work, how much does the choice of the replacement wage rate shape the final picture?
In fact, much also depends on the replacement wage rate. For instance, doubling the replacement wage, keeping hours constant, doubles the total value of unpaid work. Most countries, including Bangladesh, use a very low replacement wage rate, explicitly treating unpaid work as “unskilled.” They ignore the person-specific skills and emotional attachments that obviously enhance its “value-added.” The upshot: this methodology provides, at best a very lower-bound estimate – surely an improvement over assigning unpaid household work a value of “zero” but nonetheless a gross underestimate of its actual contribution.
Are there other countries that have taken concrete steps to include unpaid work in their national accounts? If so, how does Bangladesh’s initiative compare, and what can we learn from those experiences?
Based on the information available to me, the Bangladeshi estimates are very typical, but the government has publicised them more effectively and assertively than other countries.
In Europe – and especially in Italy – unpaid care work continues to be largely absent from mainstream economic debate. How does the situation compare in the United States? And why, in your view, has this issue struggled to gain recognition, despite strong feminist advocacy and mounting statistical evidence?
Yes, the silence on this issue is deafening. In my view, resistance comes not just from gender ideology (though this is hugely significant) but also from a vested interest in defining economic success only in terms of market outcomes. Assigning a monetary value to unpaid work – like assigning a monetary value to the deterioration of the global climate and larger environment – threatens the ideological and political hegemony of the capitalist marketplace.
For feminist economists and activists in countries like Italy – where, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat), women devote over five hours a day to unpaid labour that remains invisible in core economic indicators – what lessons can be drawn from Bangladesh’s approach? What concrete steps should we be pushing for next?
Italy has a national time-use survey; it would not be difficult to use the data in it to calculate a lower-bound estimate value of unpaid household work. Indeed, Italian researchers like Antonella Picchio and Tindara Addabbo (among others) have come close to doing so. Perhaps it is strategically useful to apply a very low replacement wage, but I urge also providing a “higher-bound” estimate by using the median wage in the economy as a whole. However, as indicated above, I think it’s also important to explain why we should move beyond GDP as a measure of success, and insist on the higher priorities of economic and demographic sustainability.
Notes
[1] As defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the replacement wage rate is "the individual net pension entitlement divided by net pre-retirement earnings, taking into account personal income taxes and social security contributions paid by workers and pensioners. It measures how effectively a pension system provides a retirement income to replace earnings, the main source of income before retirement. This indicator is measured in percentage of pre-retirement earnings by gender".
