Not accounting for these costs may also give a false sense of efficiency gains: the ‘savings’ made from the retrenchment of public services may be considered an improvement when the cost of shifting the burden and thus adding to unpaid household work remains hidden and invisible. Most public and private spending on children, for example, is classified as consumption expenditure. However, a strong case can be made that these expenditures represent an investment in future human capacities and should be accounted for separately from consumption expenditure.6 Unpaid childcare activities represent a similar investment but are not counted at all in macroeconomic statistics.