ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to look a little more closely at forms of work which are generally regarded as being outside the formal economy. If you remember back to thebeginning of Chapter 2, I mentioned how Gershuny and Pahl (1985) distinguish between two different aspects of the informal economy, the hidden or underground economy which covers work or production ‘wholly or partly for money or barter, which should be declared to some official taxation or regulatory authority, but which is wholly or partly concealed’, and the household economy, where goods and services are produced, ‘not for money, by members of a household and predominantly for members of that household . . . for which approximate substitutes might otherwise be purchased for money’. So an example of the underground economy might be a gas fitter who uses the firm’s tools and van after hours to connect gas fires for cash and ‘no questions
asked’. An example of the household economy would be the cooking of meals by someone in the household, perhaps a parent, when if this was not done meals would have to be purchased in a café.
