The Care Work System as a Fundamental Cause of Economic Inequalities

This project examines how the social organization of caregiving responsibilities shapes economic inequalities in society. The essential work of providing care for children or adults in homes, schools, nursing homes, or hospitals often comes at a significant economic cost to the caregiver. Paid care jobs typically pay significantly less than other jobs requiring the same skill level or credentials, an economic toll scholars call the paid care work penalty.

Unpaid caregivers also incur an unpaid care work penalty, which refers to the economic costs associated with providing unpaid care incurred when caregivers change or quit jobs, or reduce work hours to provide care for those in their families and communities. This project comprehensively examines how and why paid and unpaid care penalties emerge, what their consequences are, and how to mitigate them.

The project includes a targeted dissemination plan to share results with relevant constituencies and inform decision-making.

The project leverages state-of-the-art statistical regression analyses and high-quality panel survey datasets from three countries and four decades (1980s–2010s). Analyses address three central questions: (1) how providing care work, both paid and unpaid, shapes individuals’ economic outcomes, (2) how economic penalties associated with care work are linked and/or moderate economic inequalities by demographic characteristics and social class, and (3) how social policies moderate both.

Research to date has treated paid and unpaid care work penalties separately, generating critical knowledge gaps that limit the understanding of the interdependencies, co-occurrence, and synergies driving economic penalties in both types of care work. This fragmentation also makes it difficult to decipher how much individual care work penalties impact population-level economic inequalities across demographic characteristics and social class more broadly.

The project provides the first comprehensive empirical estimates that examine the significance of care work penalties in understanding the causes of economic inequalities and provides new insights to understand how care social policy and infrastructure can mitigate or exacerbate them.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.