Welfare of the Population of Georgia Before and After Economic Crisis

(though Time-Use Survey)

Dr. Eka Sepashvili

Associate Professor of Tbilisi State University, Faculty of Economics and Business.

2009

The Goals of Time Budget Survey

• To measure the level of quality of life of indiviaduals;

• To measure and analyse development program application and policy planning .

• To measure and estimate unpaid work;• To discover and evaluate gender

misbalances;

Policy Planning

• To determine needs and reasons of the problems;

• Goal-oriented policy and orientation on real problems;

• Rational usage of resources;

• Estimation of real efficiency;

• To predict the business development trends.

Time Use and Welfare

• Developed Countries and Time Poverty;

• Developing Countries and deficit of free time;

Misbalances

• Paid and unpaid work

• Care Economy

• Community work

• Gender dicrimination

Respondents of the Survey

• Urban population (68%) and agriculture population (32%).

• 58% women and 42% men.

Gender structure of the respondents

respondents of the survey

women

men

Age of Respondents

Time spent on domestic work by unemployed men and women

(I)

01020304050607080

do not do 0-2hoours

more than3 hours

men

women

Time spent on domestic work by employed men and women

(II)

01020304050607080

do not do less than1

1-2 hoursper day

morethan 2hours

men

women

3-D Column 3

Qualification requirements

  

Time spent to rise qualification

   

Qualification improvement

• Majority of respondents (women - 43% and men - 54%) does not spend any time on qualification improvement.

• As a rule, women spend 1 hour or less per day for qualification.

• As a rule, men spend 1-2 hours per day on qualification.

• Among respondents who seriously deal this issues, men prevail;

Free Time

• Inevitable activity (job, homework, sleep, purchase of food, cooking, transportation and est.)

• Free Time (rest, hobby, entertainment and est.)

• Average free time per week is 40-50 hours;

• Among respondents who has less than 20 hours free time in a week women prevail;

• Among respondents who has more than 70-80 hours free time in a week men prevail;.

• Generally, the number of women and men who has avarega 40-50 free time in a week is equal.

Time spent on reading newspaper in a week

 

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

0 saaTi 1-7 saaTi 8-14 saaTi 15 saaTi da meti

qalebi

mamakacebi

Time spent on watching the TV in a week

 

0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

35.00%

40.00%

45.00%

50.00%

0 saaTi 1-7 saaTi 8-14 saaTi 15 saaTi da meti

qalebi

mamakacebi/

Time for Rest 

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

0 saaTi 1-7 saaTi 8-14 saaTi 15 saaTi da meti

qalebi

mamakacebi/

Time-use survey in Georgia

• The Time-use wide-scale survey has not been conducted in Georgia yet. Though, in 2005 the State Department of Statistics studied time-use in one of the regions of Georgia (Guria). It was a pilot project.  The respondents’ age varied in 15-80. The result of survey showed that women spent more than 6 hours for domestic/unpaid work meanwhile men dedicated 3 times less: just 2 hours. As for paid work, men spent two times more hours on paid work than women. It appeared that men had 2 times more free time than women

After the Crisis

• The positive tendency in Georgian economy that was evidenced in the previous years has continued in the first half of 2008. After the August Russia-Georgia war and the global financial crisis the economy of Georgia seriously has fallen.

• The Government of Georgia revised its growth projections for 2009 downward to -1.5%.

• The second survey (conducted on 130 respondents) was conducted after the war with Russia and global economic crisis, in May 2009 when negative factors already caused decline of the level of the population.

• In the second phase of the survey, conducted in may 2009, participated 130 respondents, among them 78 women (60%) and 52 men (40%).

After the Crisis

The second survey  discovers the following  differences:• people who were employed in private sectors, in some cases lost their 

jobs (10%) • people’s income who were employed in private sectors, declined 

significantly;• people’s income who were employed in budget sectors, remains 

unchanged;• both private sector and budget sector employed people ‘s wellbeing has 

declined due to the inflation, that caused decline of real income.  • Time spent by men (78%) at the work increased by 10-20%;•  Time spent by women (47%) at the work increased by 15-25%;

After the Crisis(continued)

• Time spent by men (94%) at the house-wok remains the same;

•  Time spent by women (87%) at the house-wok increased by 30-35%;

• both man and women go more rare to the concerts of restraints. 

Conclusions

• Roughly estimated, the amount of unpaid work is 135 hours per week for men and 1813 hours per week for women: almost 13 times more that that of men’s.

• Georgia appeared to be standing in the middle between developed and developing countries: Our respondents do not face the problem of time-poverty (even those with high income on per capita), that is common for industrialized societies in developed countries. At the same time, our respondents (even those with low income on per capita) do not face the problem of overworked like people in developing countries. ;

Recommendations

• Data of time-use survey should be applied by policy makers to elaborate efficient policy and rationalize the state expenditures;

• Gender or other type of discrimination is often discovered only by means of statistical tools. In this regard, the method of time-use survey can provide unique assistance.