Household Resources, Structural Inequalities, and Paid Domestic, Child, and Elder Care Outsourcing in the U.S.

• In Event: 40201 - Diverse Perspectives on Care Work

Abstract

Since the mid-1900s, economic, gender, and demographic changes have intensified caregiving demands and restructured care provision, leading many households to outsource caregiving to paid workers. While prior research examines domestic, child, and elder care outsourcing separately, less is known about how households outsource paid care across multiple domains and how structural forces shape these patterns. Using 1995-2019 Consumer Expenditure Survey and Current Population Survey data, I analyze the household and structural determinants of paid care outsourcing across 10 care services, spanning domestic, child, and elder care. I examine both the likelihood of outsourcing and variation in the types of care used, distinguishing between support care (e.g., housekeeping, laundry) and interactive care (childcare and eldercare). Preliminary results show that high-SES households are significantly more likely to outsource care than low-SES households, with the largest SES gaps in support care outsourcing. Interactive care outsourcing, by contrast, is more sensitive to the number of available caregivers in the home. At the state level, structural inequalities—including the racialized and gendered composition of the labor force, migration patterns, and income polarization—are positively associated with overall rates of outsourcing, but primarily through support care services. Two-way fixed effects models further show that households in states with higher shares of Black, Hispanic, and foreign-born women in the female labor force have significantly higher odds of outsourcing support care, but not interactive care, even after accounting for caregiving resources and needs. These findings suggest that support care outsourcing is more discretionary, increasing with the devaluation of paid care, whereas interactive care outsourcing is primarily driven by caregiving constraints and less influenced by structural inequality.

Author

• Emily Curran, University of Pennsylvania