Unpaid care work and the gender dividend in El Salvador

Werner Peña, Adriana Vides, María Elena Rivera, 2020. “Trabajo productivo no remunerado y dividendo de género en El Salvador”. Notas de Población, 109. January 2020. In Spanish.

ABSTRACT:

This article uses National Transfer Accounts (NTAs) and National Time Transfer Accounts (NTTAs) to highlight the contribution made to the economy by unpaid productive work, and to show how this relates to the gender dividend in El Salvador. As NTAs do not record unpaid domestic work or care activities, they underestimate the economic contributions made by those who mostly perform these tasks, namely women. To remedy this omission, NTTAs are used to estimate the production, consumption and time transfer of unpaid production and care work. A hypothetical scenario is configured to estimate the gender dividend that would be obtained from an increase in women’s labour market participation, which would enable El Salvador to exploit the demographic dividend more effectively. It is recommended that ways be found to meet the demand for care resulting from such a scenario.