Households Satellite Account for France in 2010 - Methodological issues on the assessment of domestic production

We estimate the value of French domestic production in 2010, using the input method. We describe productive activities not currently covered by the system of national accounts (SNA) in a household satellite account (HHSA), following the recommendations of Eurostat. In line with previous studies in many developed countries, we find that remodelling the frontier of production to include domestic activities (house chores, cooking, care...) would have a sizeable effect on key macroeconomic indicators (the equivalent of 36% of the GDP, 55% of the disposable income, 63% of the consumption, and -_5 percentage points for the savings ratio). These estimates bring up several methodological issues. Most importantly, we quantify their sensitivity to technical choices which have not yet been settled by an international benchmark. The two most important issues are: first, the boundary of household production, and we advocate using a relatively narrow definition; second, the use of a gross or a net wage in the valuation of domestic work time. Valuating home production in order to build a HHSA is a very different exercise from valuating it in a welfare economics perspective. Openly choosing one or the other can help settling some of the pending issues. This work should allow further harmonisation and development of Household Satellite Accounts.