What do we learn about gender inequality using a NTA approach? Some evidence for France over the 1979-2005 period

Julien Navaux, Université Paris-Dauphine
Carole Bonnet, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Hippolyte D'Albis, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
Jacques Pelletan, University Paris 8
Anne Solaz, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
François-Charles Wolff, Université de Nantes and Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

The National Transfer Account methodology (NTA) allows to quantify transfers between age and generations. It includes consumption and income profiles, the difference between the two measures the lifecycle deficit. Recent improvements in the national accounts methodology suggest to disaggregate the NTA accounts by gender and to include the domestic production. The idea is to value domestic production in order to take into account the large quantity of goods and services produced by household members for their own consumption, without involving market transactions. In a gender perspective, this inclusion is highly pertinent as women do a large part of the unpaid work within the household. We compute all the profiles, covering the 1979-2005 period, relying for domestic production on French Time Use surveys. We observe that the inclusion of domestic production decreases the difference between the contribution of men and women at each age; the production of men is still higher than the production of women, except after 65 years old. The relation between the consumption profile of men and women is not significantly different including or not time use. Finally, the important contribution of women in time changes significantly the lifecycle deficit profile, because the deficit of men is more important with time use.