What is wealth? The simple answer is money, but that doesn’t get us very far. We may feel wealthy if we have money, but we only experience wealth when we spend it on something that we value.

So a better way to pose this question is “what do we value?” What would we spend our money on, if we could?

When people are asked what they value, the most common responses by far are “family” and “community.” People are strongly motivated to look after their own, even if they live in a family of one. “Looking after” means many things, including relationships, love and nurturing. At a material level it includes good food, housing, clothing, education and healthcare, and providing leisure activities such as sports, entertainment and holidays. A big part of that is security: not just personal safety, but the knowledge that the quality of life can be maintained in the future.

So, wealth is something that allows us to maintain and improve the quality of our lives, and we do that generally in two ways. We perform acts directly for our own benefit; and we perform acts for the benefit of others in exchange for money. This allows us to buy things that contribute to the quality of our lives.

A familiar task such as preparing a meal shows how these interact. The shopping and cooking we do directly, while the ingredients, kitchen equipment and fuel we pay for with money. This intermingling is so normal and everyday that we don’t give it a second thought.

But maybe it is worth a second thought. After all, both parts are necessary to create something that we value, and both derive from time- and energy-consuming activities (work). The only difference is that one lot of work is traded for money (paid) and the other is applied directly (unpaid).

The image shows paid and unpaid work, as last measured in 2016. On the right, in pink, is the paid work, with each row representing an area of activity such as agriculture, retail, construction, etc. On the left, in green, is the unpaid work, including childcare, adult care, cooking, cleaning, driving, DIY and volunteering.

Unpaid work is two fifths of all work, according to this method of calculation, and all that unpaid work would have to be paid for if we didn’t do it for ourselves. So it is real, productive work. But whereas paid work is measured constantly, with small movements in GDP creating news headlines, measurements of unpaid work are extremely rare. For politicians and policymakers, the economy is all about paid work, and unpaid work doesn’t get a look in.

That’s a major loss, because, in terms of wealth creation, unpaid work is among the most useful and effective - i.e. valuable - of all the things we do. It has a direct and immediate impact on the quality of our lives. Having the time and the opportunity to do more unpaid work is a quick way of helping people to feel better off.

Data sources:

GVA in the paid economy, 2022 - data from ONS here, release 28 March 2025. GVA of unpaid work by households - data from ONS here, 2022 edition.