The Economic Impact of Paid and Unpaid Care Penalties

• In Event: 40225 - Mechanisms of Inequality

Abstract

The daily provision of care for those who need it requires a vast amount of human effort; in the United States, on an average day, 32 million individuals provide paid care and 93 million provide unpaid care. Studies find that both paid and unpaid caregiving carry economic penalties, but the fragmentation of existing research obscures the extent to which care work shapes macro-level economic inequalities. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we provide an integrated analysis of care work penalties. We develop harmonized estimates of economic penalties associated with paid, unpaid, child and adult care work, and use counterfactual simulation to estimate how economic inequality would change if care work penalties did not exist. Preliminary analyses focus on gender and show that the impact of care work penalties on gender inequality is substantial. Future analyses will analyze how care penalties impact racial and class inequalities among women.

Authors

• Pilar Gonalons-Pons, University of Pennsylvania

• Melissa Hodges, Villanova University

• Allison Dunatchik, University of South Carolina-Columbia

• Zohra Ansari-Thomas, Franklin and Marshall College

• Emily Curran, University of Pennsylvania