We investigate underlying determinants of informality by representing the Turkish
Time Use Survey in 2006 and the Household Budget Surveys for the years from 2003 to
2006 conducted by Turkish Statistical Institute. Following the descriptive methodology
proposed by Gronau and Hamermesh (2006), the main focus is to describe the household
data by highlighting the main features and revealing the relative importance of
expenditures of time and goods through an exhaustive set of commodities and assign time
and goods inputs to each in order to measure their relative goods intensities. The analysis
of the evolution of commodity per time spent during 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 reveals
the fact that the average values for total expenditures per total time spent show increases in
a decreasing trend (concave shape) over these years. Supposing that the average time spent
among these years is constant on average (meaning that they did not really change from
one year to another), the result of this accounting support the hypotheses that the amount of
consumption present in household production during these years decreased. Our findings
could be used as guides to better understanding the socio-economic conditions in
developing countries and to obtain more accurate measurements of the size of informality,
poverty and income inequalities.