Oli Hawrylyshyn’s Contribution to the Economic Valuation of Unpaid Domestic Work

This article examines the pivotal contribution of Oli Hawrylyshyn (1943–2020) to the economic valuation of unpaid domestic work. Responding to feminist critiques of GDP in the 1970s, Hawrylyshyn moved beyond Gary Becker’s focus on time allocation to specifically measure the economic value of domestic labor. While Hawrylyshyn adopted Becker’s view of the household as a producer, he rejected the strict use of opportunity cost, arguing it overestimated the value of unpaid work by ignoring the pleasure derived from certain tasks. His most significant theoretical innovation was distinguishing between direct utility (personal satisfaction from the activity itself) and indirect utility (the economic value of the service provided). This distinction underpinned his operational third-person criterion: a task is considered a distinct economic activity only if it can be delegated to a paid third party without reducing its utility to the household. By enabling statisticians to filter time-use surveys for productive labor, this method bridged the gap between theory and practice, notably influencing pioneering statistical studies in France during the 1980s.