Millions of people rise earlier than the rest of the world. They cook, dress elderly parents, console the sick kids, and do all this without a paycheck. This is care work. And the global economy depends on it.
The Hidden Engine
The care work includes childcare, eldercare, nursing, household work, and emotional support. The jobs, such as nurses, social workers, and home health aides, are paid, but most of them are not.
According to the International Labour Organisation, the unpaid care work is equivalent to about 9% of the global GDP. The share is greater in certain countries. In case care workers went on strike tomorrow, the economy could collapse in a few days. Think about that for a moment.
We have built entire civilisations using the work we are not willing to appreciate.
Who Does the Work?
Women perform around 75% of all unpaid care work worldwide. This is an even higher proportion in low-income countries.
Young girls drop out of school to take care of their siblings. Women reduced their working hours to take care of their aged family members. Family responsibilities curve around entire career paths.
That establishes a gender wealth disparity. The women retire having less money, fewer assets, and more financial risks in their old age. Care is gendered, with actual economic implications.
The Paid Care Problem
Even jobs in paid care are not well paid. Home health aides have a median wage of less than $15 per hour in the U.S. The childcare workers usually get less pay than the parking-lot attendants. Such jobs demand patience, ability, emotional intelligence, and endurance.
Why are they paid so little? Partly because they were historically performed for free by women at home. That assumption is costing us. Staff turnover in the care industry is so high that it makes the lives of vulnerable individuals unstable. Poorly funded eldercare may lead to avoidable diseases. Poor childcare compels several parents, mostly mothers, to remain out of the labour force.
Counting What Counts
The new approach is demanded by some economists now. They desire care work to become constituents of national accounts, having satellite accounts that measure unpaid household labour and formal economic output.
New Zealand and Canada are already after it. Now they follow well-being indicators along with conventional GDP numbers. It is a move in the right direction.
However, just counting is not sufficient. Numbers must lead to policy changes. Social programmes, like paid family leave, subsidised childcare, and a living wage for care workers, are more than just social programmes; they are economic investments with quantifiable pay-offs.
The Compassion Tax
The compassion tax is the term that should be used. It is the implicit cost that society imposes, primarily on women, of being nurturing, of standing in, of taking care of the gaps caused by markets and the state.
It manifests itself in the form of lost wages, reduced pensions, abandoned or thwarted careers, and unrecognised fatigue.
Nobody decided to pay this tax; it was just assumed that they would.
A Different Kind of Accounting
We are experiencing demographic stresses: ageing populations, declining birth rates in high-income countries, and their soaring demand.
It is not a question of whether or not we can afford not to value care work. Compassion unites families, maintains communities, and allows individuals to die and live with dignity. It allows people to live and die with dignity. That is not a soft value. That is the foundation of everything else. It is time the economy started treating it that way.