The Use of Time in Peru: A Scarce and Unvalued Resource in the National Economy

Conventional measures of economic well-being, such as gross domestic product (GDP) and poverty, do not consider the goods produced within the household or the unpaid work done at home. This study analyzes the quantification of the value added generated within a Peruvian household based on the recalculation of the average wage of domestic workers. It proposes measure that complements monetary poverty by considering the time requirements for household production: the poverty of time. The calculation of this time shows that 43.7 percent of the population in 2010 was poor, that is, 12.62 percentage points above the official poverty rate. Thus, the vulnerability of 12.62 percent of the population is hidden when the conventional measure of poverty is used, which does not consider the time poverty of the people.