It is well known that housework, care work, and other productive activities performed within a household are excluded from the measurement of Gross Domestic Product and economic growth. The historical reasons for this exclusion, however, are comparatively unknown. This paper presents a close reading of the economist Simon Kuznets’ work from the 1930s – 1970s, suggesting more nuanced reasons for the exclusion of domestic labor than a simple lack of esteem or consideration. Through the lens of this debate, many larger questions are engaged: where does the economy end and society begin? What is the relation of economic welfare to human wellbeing? What is the ultimate point of these indicators, and how does their use influence their form? How does statistical measurement coexist with and relate to non-quantitative or non-technical ways of knowing (local knowledge compared with scientific knowledge, to borrow Hayek’s phrase)? Furthermore, this essay investigates the ever-greater interweaving of macroeconomic indicators into public consciousness by examining the social stakes of being counted. In the second half of the 20th century, feminist publications ranging from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Padua, Italy and Wellington, New Zealand lamented the fact that women’s work in the home “counted for nothing.” Why did it become rhetorically desirable to have one’s efforts recorded in the national account? I argue that GDP was initially conceived as a far narrower statistical entity, with acknowledged philosophical questions at its foundation, and never intended to be the arbiter of whether an activity was productive, worthwhile, or valuable. This paper charts the expansion of the concept into popular media and discourse, often to the dissent of its architects. I conclude by reviewing some economists’ efforts to “reform” GDP by proposing imputed measurements of domestic work, and others’ plans to “revolutionize” our understanding of the economy by shifting away from GDP entirely.

Pre-Circulated Paper

The pre-circulated paper will be available one-week prior to the workshop. The paper will be available to the Princeton University community via SharePoint(Link is external). All others should request a copy of the paper by emailing Friedrich Asschenfeldt.