女性福祉、贫困与工作强度

Women's well-being, poverty, and work intensity

Feminist Economics · 1995
被引 117
人大 A-ABS 2

中文导读

论文指出现有生活水平测量和家庭经济模型忽视了工作强度这一时间利用维度,探讨了贫困女性因多任务并行导致的高工作强度对福祉的影响,并呼吁学者和政策制定者关注。

Abstract

High work intensity, as a result of doing two tasks at a time, is an important dimension of well-being. For many poor, working women, it represents a necessary means of coping when real wages fall, prices rise and basic services are cut. And yet existing standard-of-living measurements and household economic models fail to address this important dimension of time use. This paper argues that the lack of consideration of the length and intensification of work time is a serious neglect in the study of women's well-being.The first section of the paper examines the importance of time use as a determinant of the quality of life, particularly for working women. It also explores the relationship between poverty and work intensity or the simultaneous performance of two or more tasks. The theoretical implications of work intensity on household models are discussed in the second section of the paper. A household well-being function that incorporates both goods and time-use components as arguments is introduced in a single (working)-person household framework. When time use, particularly work intensity, is taken into account, the notion of joint production becomes relevant and subsequent complications arise. Finally, the need for reassessment of present time-use survey methods and of current policy evaluations is discussed in the concluding section of the paper. The seriousness of the effects of work intensity, particularly on women's health and children's well-being, strongly suggests that this qualitative dimension of time use deserves urgent attention from scholars and policy-makers.

女性福祉贫困工作强度时间利用