The Fact
BEA household-production satellite-account estimates indicate that including unpaid household production would have raised measured U.S. GDP by roughly 37–39% in 1965, depending on the BEA vintage and method used.
What This Means
Standard GDP leaves out a large amount of unpaid work performed inside households because no market transaction occurs. Satellite accounts show that adding that production materially changes the measured size of the economy.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Accounting for Household Production in the National Accounts and related household-production statistics.