Household Production and Consumption in Finland 2001

6.3 Conclusions by type ofhousehold
There are marked differences between different household types both with
respect to the volume of production, its breakdown between different
principal functions and the structure of production. Production volumes
increase more or less steadily from the first to the fifth income quintile. The
minor deviations seen in this pattern are explained by the types of household,
suggesting that household structure and life-stage have a greater impact on
household production than incomes.
The use of intermediate goods and services decreases and the share of
labour increases with advancing age both among people living alone and
among couples. Given the high proportion of care provision, the value of
labour in families with small children exceeds the figures for other types of
households.
The purchases of final consumption products are highest in relative terms
in the provision of meals and snacks, second highest in clothing and third
highest in housing. The one exception here is represented by families with
small children, where the expenditure on childcare services is somewhat
higher than expenditure on clothes and clothing care. Since day care is heavily
subsidised by the public sector, the results for the proportion of final
consumption purchases in this comparison are lower than the true figures. In
the provision of meals, the mass production of foods is highly efficient and
highly processed products provide a competitive option to household
production, in both price and quality terms. The shift to market production
has been even more pronounced in the manufacture of clothes. People no
longer have the same skills they used to, which is another reason why DIY
clothes no longer are a competitive option. Doing the laundry at home with an
automatic washing machine, on the other hand, is cheaper and more
convenient than using professional laundry services. Very few households
reported using these services. The cleaning services market was also very much
in its infancy in Finland in 2001 (Aalto 2003).
It seems then that age has an impact on the volume of household
production and particularly on the share of labour in household production.
However it is too early to say whether the reason for this lies in generational
differences in lifestyles, or whether the difference is due to life-stage or
household structure. Our focus here is primarily on life-stage and structural
factors because no time series are as yet available that would describe
generational differences. Single-person households and couples aged over 65
spend more time in unpaid work than younger households, and in these
households, labour accounts for a larger proportion of the value of production.
The older people are used to self-provisioning. They also have more time on
their hands and consequently they might work more slowly. What is more, not
all pensioners can take advantage of subsidised meals at service centres in the
same way as people who go to work, so they often prepare their own meals.
60 Statistics Finland National Consumer Research Centre