Household Production and Consumption in Finland 2001

Figure 23. Volunteer work by type of household
€/ /household /year
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
Travel and services
Gross value added
0
Under 45 45–64 65+ Under 45 45–64 65+ Single Youngest Youngest Others
yrs yrs yrs yrs yrs yrs parents 0–6 7–17
Persons living alone Couples
Families with children
The highest volunteer production figures were recorded for couples aged
45–64 (over 3,500 euros, Figure 23). One explanation may be that these
couples give informal help to their elderly parents who live in separate
households. The volunteer work was also higher than average in families with
schoolchildren, where the bulk of this production consists of volunteer work
related to children’s leisure activities and hobbies.
6.2 Household production by types ofhousehold
at national level
A household analysis at the national level yields a rather different picture than
the examination of individual households. This is because the number of
different types of households in our country varies. In Figure 24, the value of
production by single-parent households, for example, is as low as it is because
there are so few households in this category (80,110). By contrast there is a
very large number of households with couples aged 45–64 (almost 311,000),
so their behaviour has a major impact on the national figures for household
production. The number of single-person households under 45 is higher still
(317,000), but they account for a comparatively small proportion of
household production owing to their small amount of unpaid work.
Two-parent families with children, which number around half a million,
account for one-third of the country’s total household production. Production
accounts for different types of households at the national level are shown in
Appendix 7. The Table also shows the average gross value added and the value
of output per individual household (euros per household). (These rows are
placed immediately below the value of output).
SNA production consists primarily of housing services produced by
owner-occupiers. The proportions of SNA production in different types of
58 Statistics Finland National Consumer Research Centre