The overall total is greater than the combined output of Britain’s retail and manufacturing companies, and amounts to an average of nearly £19,000 of unpaid work by each person in Britain, whether otherwise employed or not.

In reality, however, the value is not so evenly spread. A previous official study found that women shouldered most of the burden of unpaid work in Britain, doing proportionally more than twice as much cooking, child care and laundry as men. Transport, including driving to work, was the only area where men put in more unpaid working hours than women.

“Women are at a clear disadvantage by the unfair burden of the amount of household work they are expected to do,” said Alexandra Holt, a volunteer researcher for the Fawcett Society, a women’s rights charity.

“While it’s useful to have these figures available to us, nothing will change before we fix the ingrained perception in society that equates femininity with domesticity,” Ms. Holt added.

The fair valuation and distribution of domestic work has long been a subject of debate, sometimes in the form of a demand for wages for housework. Campaigners in Italy and in India have called for women who work in the home to be paid a salary.