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Abstract
Gender is at the center of wide range of policy debates in many parts of the world, pointing to the need for analytical tools with a gender dimension. Drawing on the emerging literature of gendered computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis, this paper takes a first step toward an analysis some of the gender-related challenges faced by aging high-income economies in East Asia (like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) in relation to care (of young and elderly) and time use. Its more specific purpose is to develop and test a prototype CGE model, accompanied by a stylized East Asian high-income country database. The model is designed for analysis of care policy with a focus on the expansion of care services for young and elderly, which may be provided by government and private services, and the distributional consequences this may have in terms of household wellbeing, inequality, and the incomes, employment, and time use for males and females. Compared to standard economic analysis, the model and the database is extended beyond GDP to cover leisure and household production of care and other services. In outline, the paper consists of a literature review (Section 2), a presentation of the model and its database with a focus on the extensions to a standard CGE model that are introduced to address the care economy and time use (Section 3), presentation and analysis of simulations (Section 4), and conclusions (Section 5). The paper appendices present additional simulation results