system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do economists measure unpaid work?

How do economists measure unpaid work? 

Alice has a farm and grows 20 apples. 

She eats 10 of them and sells 10 of them for 1 USD each. 

She has 10 USD to spend otherwise. 

Would you say she has an income of 10 USD, even though she produced 20 USD worth of apples? 

Bob has a farm and grows 15 flowers. 

He sells all of them for 1 USD each, and buys 10 apples to eat for 1 USD each. 

He has 5 USD to spend otherwise. 

Would you say that Bob is "richer" than Alice, even though he has less money to spend after buying apples to eat?
gpt
From a theoretical economic point of view Alice produces more output than Bob, and assuming no costs or expenses were required to produce the output, then income is equal to output and therefore Alice is wealthier than Bob. That's because what Alice produced is worth $20 and what Bob produced is worth $15.

The problem in the real world is that the 10 apples that Alice eats is impossible to measure. We usually refer to this "household production". The common IRL example people give is the young mother who stops working and stays home to care for the child. In terms of the statistics the government is collecting, the household's income has fallen since the mother isn't working anymore. But their real income/output may have risen if the mother's childcare service is worth more than her old income.

So in short; Alice is richer, but government statistics would say Bob is richer.