Postdoctoral Researcher / Scientific Collaborator: Social Production Satellite Account for Switzerland 80 - 100 %

Social production is a macroeconomic indicator that extends the national accounts beyond GDP by placing a monetary value on unpaid socially productive activity that creates genuine social, environmental, and economic value but remains invisible in the current economic frame – including care work, volunteering, civic participation, mentoring, ecological stewardship, and contributions to open knowledge. Its measurement gives governments a macro signal for the challenges of this era, allowing a non-market productive capacity (that performs a load-bearing function within formal systems) to be tracked, evaluated, and protected from depletion as nations manage ageing populations, fiscal pressure, and the sustainability of health and care systems.

The method has been demonstrated through research-based proof-of-concept studies in Australia, the United States, and Norway, but no statistical office has yet brought it into the national accounts as a satellite account. This position would lead the work to establish a pilot Social Production Satellite Account for Switzerland, the first of its kind, aligned with FSO national accounting conventions and built on data the office already holds. It is a defined, high-visibility programme that would establish Swiss leadership in the field and a model for other national statistical offices.

The project will also use these measures to examine how productive contribution changes across the lifecourse, including the contribution of older people, providing a new empirical basis for understanding healthy longevity and the economic implications of population ageing. Therefore the role combines two functions. First, the postholder will establish a pilot Social Production Satellite Account for Switzerland, aligning the established social production methodology with Swiss national accounting conventions and the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010) and international System of National Accounts (SNA). Second, they will apply the resulting measures to examine how productive contribution changes across the lifecourse, including the contribution of older people, providing a new empirical basis for understanding healthy longevity and the economic implications of population ageing. The post is jointly hosted by the FSO National Accounts Section and the UZH Centre for Healthy Longevity and is connected to a research team at the University of Sydney. The underlying method was developed by the University of Sydney's Mental Wealth Initiative with input from a broad range of international institutional and multilateral collaborators and has been peer reviewed and published.