The measurement of time-related underemployment relies on thresholds against which to compare working time/hours worked, as well as questions on desire and availability to work. Desire and availability to work are still not included in many socioeconomic surveys, although some LSMS-ISA surveys (including the 2013-14 Uganda survey, presented in Table 2 and Figure 4 below) include variants of these questions. Accurate reporting of hours worked can be challenging when unpaid activities are conducted simultaneously with paid work — as in the case of contributing family workers, whom the ILO LFS pilot studies found to report, on average, the least number of hours compared to other employed groups (Benes and Walsh, 2018c). Better counting of employment, as discussed in Section II, can help address some of these issues. Proxy reporting (and in particular, women proxies) can also lead to lower estimates of hours worked, as discussed further in this section. Table 2, which presents data from the 2013-14 Uganda LSMSISA, also shows that women proxies from poor households (who are mostly rural) are significantly less likely to report desire to work than male proxies, even though the difference between own-reporting men and women is not significant (for the non-poor sample, gender gaps emerge in both own and proxy reporting). As with the issues raised in Section II around proxy reporting of market activity in agriculture, further investigation is needed across countries on how women proxies, particularly in poorer contexts, might affect reporting.

Table 2. Uganda National Panel Survey, 2013-14: share of women and men who would like to work more paid hours, by own- versus proxy reporting, and poverty status

||W<br>Own<br>reporting|omen (W<br>Proxy|)<br>Diff. (own-<br>proxy)|<br>Own<br>reporting|Men (M)<br>Proxy|Diff. (own-<br>proxy)|Gender gap<br>(W-M, own<br>reporting)|<br> <br> <br>Gender gap<br>(W-M, proxy<br>reporting)|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Below poverty line (sample)|545|475||327|584||||
|Would like to work more (additional|0.62|0.47|0.15***|0.65|0.54|0.11***|0.03|<br>-0.07**|
|paid hours in same/different job)<br>Would not like to work more|[0.49]<br>0.36<br>[0.48]|[0.50]<br>0.42<br>[0.49]|-0.06**|[0.48]<br>0.34<br>[0.47]|[0.50]<br>0.36<br>[0.48]|-0.03|0.02|<br>0.06**|
|Don’t know|0.02<br>[0.13]|0.10<br>[0.30]|-0.08***|0.01<br>[0.12]|0.10<br>[0.30]|-0.09***|0.01|<br>0.002|
|Above poverty line (sample)|1786|1496||1173|1992||||
|Would like to work more (additional<br>paid hours in same/different job)<br>Would not like to work more|0.49<br>[0.50]<br>0.48<br>[0.50]|0.34<br>[0.47]<br>0.57<br>[0.49]|0.15***<br>-0.09***|0.59<br>[0.49]<br>0.39<br>[0.49]|0.42<br>[0.49]<br>0.48<br>[0.50]|0.17***<br>-0.08***|-0.10***<br>0.09***|<br>-0.08***<br> <br>0.09***|
|Don’t know|0.02<br>[0.14]|0.10<br>[0.30]|-0.08***|0.03<br>[0.17]|0.09<br>[0.29]|-0.06***|-0.01|<br>0.01|
|Notes:|||||||||

(1) Source: UNPS 2013-14 round. The question on desire to work additional hours was asked, for those employed, as follows: “In the last 7 days, would [NAME] have liked to work more hours than [NAME] actually worked, provided the extra hours had been paid?” (1=Yes, in the current job 2=Yes, in taking an additional job 3=Yes, in a different job with more hours 4=No, and 9=Don’t know).

On availability to work, recent LSMS surveys ask respondents if they would “want to work if a job or business opportunity becomes available.” In the ILO LFS study, respondents were asked two separate questions on (a) whether they would want to work more paid hours per week than usual (desire to work), and (b) whether they could start working those hours in the next two weeks (availability to work).

(2) T-tests of equality of means were conducted between proxy and own-reporting, as well as across men and women within each of these categories. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

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