There is no doubt that the day-to-day household tasks that people do, such as cleaning, cooking, and caring for dependent children and adults, are productive activities. However, assigning economic importance to such activities can be challenging, as they are often done outside the market economy and therefore do not have an observable monetary value. Making an effort to estimate the monetary value of the unpaid household activities we all do each day is important in order to understand the true economic output or performance of a country and to highlight inequalities in society, such as pay gaps and differences between sexes in the contribution of various domestic and caregiving activities, which are often invisible to the broader society.
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