3.2 MEASURING UNPAID CARE WORK TIME
3.2.5 The South African Time Use Survey and the care economy
In South Africa the central source of data on time-use is the 2000 TUS conducted by Statistics South Africa. The TUS utilised the same activity classification system as that outlined in section 3.2.1 (Budlender, 2008). Apart from this, little research has been undertaken on time spent in unpaid work, and few quantitative South African studies contain any questions on care provision.
The child labour component of the 2006 Labour Force Survey (LFS) contains a few questions on time spent on housework and care of others.
The 2000 TUS consists of a 24-hour open-ended diary with half-hour slots as the main instrument used to record activities. The diary was administered through face-to-face interviews with two people from each of the sampled households, aged ten or over, who had undertaken the activities.
The realised sample was 8,564 households and 14,553 respondents (Budlender, 2006; Budlender et al., 2001). One of the focuses of the TUS was on unpaid care work and the survey therefore provides a number of findings on care provision in South Africa.
Results show that men tend to spend longer than women on SNA work, while women spend considerably longer than men on extended SNA work. Men are also more likely than women to do SNA work, while women are more likely than men to do extended SNA work (Budlender, 2008. On average women spend a larger proportion of their day (23 percent) on productive activities than men (19 percent), although they are likely to be paid for less of this time
(Budlender et al., 2001, p. 5). Women do eight times as much care work as men, on average, and most of this is undertaken in respondents’ own homes (Budlender et al., 2001, p. 44). With regard to non-SNA production activities, Budlender (2008) finds that the majority of men and women undertake some housework, the level of community care is very low for both men and women, and person care is very low for men, but not for women.
Women account for over three-quarters of the volume of unpaid care work. Males do a fairly consistently low amount of unpaid care work, while there is high variability in the amount of this work that women undertake. Moreover, 30 percent of males compared to less than 10 percent of females spent no time on unpaid care work on the previous day. However, two percent of women and a negligible number of males spent longer than 12 hours on unpaid care work (Budlender, 2008, p. 30). Among women, African women spend more time on unpaid care work than women in the other population groups, and among women and men the unemployed spend more time on unpaid care work than other groups. Unpaid care work activities are more likely than SNA work activities to be done simultaneously (Budlender, 2008).
Sienaert (2008), analysing the 2000 TUS, finds that the time costs of looking after children (defined as household residents aged 0 to 14) are substantial. They tend to reduce total household market work and are carried almost entirely by women. Children reduce the market labour supply and increase the non-market labour supply of women such that women’s total work time rises with children, on average.
Less than half a percent of males and one percent of females participate in at least one of three adult care activities: physical care of non-child household members, physical care of
accompanying adults, care for non-household adults. Yet the average time spent on adult care by these individuals is substantial at 79 minutes per day. However, because of the low participation rates and the low overall averages it is not useful to calculate the average minutes for sub-groups of the population. Of those who provide care for adults, a third are aged 50 and over; half are single; those with children living with them are over-represented by six percentage points when compared with the survey population, suggesting that these carers have a number of care
responsibilities; the unemployed represent 13 percent of adult carers but only seven percent of the total survey population; 46 percent are found in rural areas versus only 36 percent of the sampled population. Budlender believes this latter finding could be attributable to the over-representation of older people in rural areas and thus a greater need for care, and also adult children returning
‘home’ to rural areas to be cared for (Budlender, 2008, p. 26). Only eight percent of adult carers are from the poorest households and 46 percent personally report no cash income (Budlender, 2008, p. 27).
Overall the results show that most people do not report direct care. Almost a third of females but only six percent of males spent some time on person care in the previous 24 hours (Budlender, 2008, p. 18). However, there are some individuals who spend a lot of their time providing care for persons: four percent of females and negligible numbers of males spent six hours or longer on person care in the previous day (Budlender, 2008, p. 31). The amount of time spent on person care is relatively even across the population groups. Unemployed women spend more time caring for persons than other groups but the same is not true for unemployed men. Moreover, across all
population groups, females were found to be more likely than males to do some person care and less likely to do paid work. These gender differences relating to person care are more noteworthy for Africans and coloureds than for whites. Further, African women were found to be six times more likely than African men to combine person care and paid work in the same day (Budlender, 2008, p. 19). With regard to person care across settlement types, there are only small differences among women, but among men, levels of this type of work are strikingly lower in deep rural areas than in other areas, signifying that care provision by males is seen as socially unacceptable in these areas.
With regard to income levels, among women it is those in the poorest group who are more likely to report person care than in the other income groups. This could signify that these women are less likely to be able to buy in care provision than those in higher income groups. Women in the poorest households spend longer on person care than those in better-off households. Coloured women spend more time than other women on person care, while African men spend less time than other men. Women in the middle age group bear the main burden of person care. Women in child-plus-adult households spend much longer on person care than those in other types of household, while women living in three-generation households have the next highest expenditure of time (Budlender, 2008).
Budlender (2008) ran a Tobit estimation to establish the key determinants of time spent providing care for persons. She finds that being male, being employed, having one’s child under the age of seven living in the household, years of schooling, age and ‘age multiplied by the same age’ are all significant determinants of time spent on person care. Among the dummy factors, having one’s young child co-residing has the strongest effect, and gender has the next strongest effect. Being male and being employed reduces the time spent on person care, while all the other factors increase the time spent.
Apart from providing useful indications of the distribution of unpaid care work, the TUS provides data that “lay the basis for an elaboration of GDP through parallel national accounts” (Budlender et al., 2001, p. 3). However, these findings only give a broad picture of the situation with regard
to care provision in South Africa. The TUS is not able to provide information on the activities of a small proportion of the population, or activities whose entire duration is relatively short – such as time periods over which care is provided for dependent people (Budlender, 2008). The survey does not provide enough detailed time-use information on care provision and specific care activities undertaken within the home. The research obtained for this thesis provides this type of information, and contributes towards filling this research gap. It provides detailed information on care activities and in this way sheds light on care provision within the home for a person in need of much care.