We examine the relative pay of occupations involving care, such as teaching, counseling, providing health services, or supervising children. We use panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Care work pays less than other occupations, after controlling for the education and employment experience of the workers, many job characteristics, and (via individual fixed effects) unmeasured, stable characteristics of those who hold the jobs. Both men and women in care work pay this wage penalty. However, the penalty is paid disproportionately by women since more women than men do this kind of work.
How should “care” be defined and measured in ways that enhance our understanding of the impact of economic development on women? This paper addresses this question, suggesting several possible approaches to the development of indices that would measure gender differences in responsibility for the financial and temporal care of dependents.Gender, Care, Empowerment, Dependents, Unpaid work, Time use,
The connections between the world of money and profit and the world of care and concern are of great importance to society. Traditionally, the "public" world of markets and government was the realm of men, while the "private" realm of family and social relationships was entrusted to women. While some of women's tasks were largely instrumental-cleaning and cooking, for example-many tasks contained more personalized and emotional components. Women were in charge of children, elderly, and the ill; maintaining personal relationships; offering emotional support, personal attention, and listening; embodying (or so it was understood) sexuality. This social contract is changing. As women move increasingly into the world of paid work, many of these traditional intimate tasks are being performed in relationships that include the explicit movement of money. Paid child care, nursing homes for the elderly, talk therapy and phone sex are just a few examples. What are economists to make of this trend?This essay analyzes the consequences of this mixing of realms of "love" and "money" for economic analysis, societal well-being, and public policy. We document the empirical magnitudes of the shifts from nonmarket to market time use, with an eye to their gender dimensions and implications for economic theory. On a more philosophical note, we point out that most current intellectual conceptualizations of these economic issues are inadequate. Whether commentators celebrate the movement to the market or bemoan it, the use of unexamined assumptions and outdated rhetoric is endemic to the literature. An a priori judgment that markets must improve caregiving by increasing efficiency puts the brakes on intelligent research, rather than encouraging it. Likewise, an
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