Argentina’s 2021 Time-Use Survey

Work without a wage is not work that never happened. INDEC’s final results from Argentina’s 2021 time-use survey place domestic work, care, employment and other activities within one schedule. Published in October 2022, the report concerns fieldwork in 2021; publication and observation years must remain distinct.

One person aged 14 or over was randomly selected within participating households to describe activities in the previous 24 hours. A household care-demand module additionally examines who needs care and how households arrange it. Care becomes a relationship among people and services, beyond a particular woman’s individual preference.

An average needs a denominator

The report records unpaid-work participation of 91.7% for women and 75.1% for men. Among participants, average time is six hours 31 minutes and three hours 40 minutes respectively. Participation asks how widely a task is undertaken; participants’ time asks how long those doing it spend. Neither can be substituted for an average across the entire population, including nonparticipants.

Simultaneous activity creates another interpretive issue. Cooking while caring for a child does not literally add an hour to the day. Recording only the main activity, however, may erase care. Whether a measure includes simultaneous activities belongs within the interpretation of a table. The lost information can concern continuing responsibility as well as a quantity of labor.

Measuring a difference does not establish its cause

The sampling design concerns EPH urban agglomerations and places with at least 100,000 inhabitants in the 2010 census, rather than unconditional coverage of every rural community. Population scope, reference day and sex categories need to accompany conclusions. A cross-section cannot alone establish which family belief caused a gap or that a particular reform reduced it.

The survey instead supports concrete questions about overlapping paid and unpaid work, control over one’s schedule and available care services. South Korea’s 2024 time-use survey offers another measurement framework. Carrasco’s account of sustaining human life questions economics organized only around market production. Comparing countries requires aligning populations, activities and measures before ranking their numbers.