The purpose of this study is to analyze the allocation of time assigned to home production in
Turkey. For this, firstly, the determinants of the time allocated for unpaid work and childcare were
examined. The time spent for unpaid work and child care in Turkey have been tried to explain with
many social, economic and demographic variables. Secondly, the economic value of the time allocated
to these activities is calculated by various methods. The second Time Use Survey (TUS) data in Turkey
was published in 2016 for the period covering 2014-2015. This allows for the first time in Turkey to
observe and compare changes in time use. The importance of this study that it is the first study to
examine non-market work by 2014-2015 TUS data.

Time is the most important and scarce resource for both individuals and societies. Yet, for a long
time, economics has been interested time spent only in market activities. It could be said that Becker
(1965) is the starting point of the literature on household economics. In his pioneer work, Becker made
it clear for the first time the economic importance of time outside of the market. Becker considered
that the time spent by the household members as an input to produce or prepare the goods for which
the individual benefit from. In addition to this, leisure time in the utility function of individuals is a
choice variable. According to the classical microeconomic theory, households who try to maximize
their utility, have a time constraint as well as a budget constraint. Following this classic approach,
“new home economics” which developed by Gronau (1977) formalized unpaid work. Along with these
developments, the economics has become interested in the whole-time allocation of individuals.

With the spread of Time Use Surveys, the economic dimensions of time spent in market and nonmarket have begun to be examined in different countries. Time allocation decisions of individuals give information about the society we live in. For this reason, time use researches have become an important field of sociology. Later, with the development of the field of household economics, the economic
dimensions of time allocation have begun to be discussed. According to Soussa-Poza and Widmer
(2000), there are three basic reasons within the economic framework of these studies: Firstly, unpaid
work creates prosperity and improves public welfare. It is also known as an important indicator of
well-being. Nonetheless, there is an ongoing debate about non-inclusion of unpaid housework in GDP
calculations. Secondly, the monetary value of these activities is needed in litigation testimony (injury,
divorce, death, etc.). A third important reason is that only monetary valuation catches the public
attention.

Miranda (2011) and Evenson (1983) are two important studies for international comparison of time
allocated for unpaid work. Therefore, there are studies in the literature that measure the share of GDP
for many countries. For example, only caregiving has the 4,4% in Poland and 5% GDP share in Italy.
(Francavilla et al., 2011) Gianneli et al. (2012) report that monetary value of total unpaid work is
31,6% of GDP in EU countries. In the other study, Dong and An (2014) state similar shares for China.
They use the first Time Use Survey of China and calculate that unpaid housework has 32% GDP share.

On the other hand, women’s labor force participation is an important determinant of household
distribution of housework and care workload. There is a strong negative relationship between labor force participation of women and time assigned to unpaid housework in the literature. A more

The studies related to the subject in Turkey are mainly limited to the 2006 TUS Survey data. In
studies about unpaid housework, Öneş et al. (2013) emphasize that the amount of unpaid work relates
to poverty. Also, Kaya Bahçe and Memiş (2013) state that unpaid work relates with a risk of income
fluctuations. The first attempt to measure the monetary value of non-market activities used data from
a pilot survey in 1996. This study reported that non-market activities have 34% (between 34% and
52%, depending on calculation technique) share of GDP. (Kasnakoğlu & Dayıoğlu, 2002). İlkkaracan
and Gündüz (2009) examined the value of total non-market activities in Turkey with the opportunity
cost and minimum wage approaches using 2006 TUS data. According to this work, the economic value
of these activities corresponds to 25% or 45% of the GDP of the period.

In this study, we use TUS 2014-2015 data to analyze the allocated time of unpaid work and child
care. TUS is conducted by TUIK in Turkey. The survey that conducted between July 2014 and June
2015 is applied to 5070 households. There are 11,815 individuals that aged 10 years and over in the
sample. The time use data of these individuals is collected at the intervals of 10 minutes for one
weekday and one weekend. Also, the survey includes an information about the socio-economic and
demographic structure of individuals. In this study, we use TUS data to measure unpaid work and child
care. Therefore, we try to analyze the determinants of these household activities. This study focuses
on the variables that education, labor force status, wage, and household structure. There are many
individuals in the sample who say they do not spend any time on those activities. In other words, the
dependent variable has large number of zero observations. Consequently, we prefer to use the censored
TOBIT method to solve this limited dependent variable problem. Tobit estimations include wage
variable. We use wage data from Turkish Labour Force Survey and estimate reservation wages with
Heckman procedure. Furthermore, we calculate the monetary value of unpaid work and child care.