CARE WORK AND
THE ECONOMY
Advancing policy solutions with
gender-aware macroeconomic models
A Bold Research Agenda
Care Work and the Economy is striving to reduce gender gaps in economic outcomes and enhance gender equality by illuminating and properly valuing the broader economic and social contributions of caregivers and integrating care in macroeconomic policymaking toolkits. We work to provide policymakers and advocacy groups with gender-aware data and analytical tools needed to support, in this era of demographic shifts and economic change, creative policy solutions to chronic public underinvestment in care provisioning and infrastructures and the constraints care work places on women’s life and employment choices.
Policies to Advance Equity
Making care work visible and integrating care and other gendered behaviors into tools policymakers use will lead to better solutions for women and more inclusive growth. Despite considerable progress, women’s choices around caregiving and employment remain constrained. Policymakers need better data on care work and gender-aware analytic tools that illustrate how economic and social policies affect men and women differently to create an enabling environment for the realization of women’s rights.
Meet our Community
We are building a broad network of researchers and policymakers interested in enhancing the methods and tools used for exploring, measuring, and analyzing policies related to care work. We engage economists, sociologists, demographers, gender and development scholars, and others to advance the assessment of care work and a fuller recognition of gender in planning and practice.
THE LATEST
Inequalities in access to U.S. care servicesIn the U.S., states and localities are beginning to ease social distancing policies resulting from the pandemic. With many workplaces calling Americans to return to work, the nation’s care services system, what was already broken, is now in dire need of repair or replace. According to a recent analysis by the Center for American ProgressREAD MORE ❯
The Covid-19 Care PenaltyIn the U.S., as elsewhere, essential workers have been rightly praised for their willingness to take on additional risk and stress. Their commitment to helping patients, students, and customers face-to-face went beyond the ordinary requirements of earning a paycheck. Yet some essential workers faced more serious risks of infection than others, and differences in payREAD MORE ❯
GENDER EQUALITY WORKS FOR EVERYONEIn an interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Care Work and the Economy lead researcher for the Rethinking Macroeconomics group Elissa Braunstein of Colorado State University explores social reproduction from a macroeconomic perspective. She explains how processes of economic growth need labor, both paid and unpaid, as an input; yet macroeconomists almost neverREAD MORE ❯
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