Rebuilding Care in a Post-Pandemic World

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The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of care as a necessary service for people at different stages of their lives, yet very little is known about the structure of the industry. This multi-country project will investigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on care providers and recipients, identify care system’s strengths and weaknesses, and recommend policy improvements. Teams from Brazil, Colombia, Canada, France, UK, and US will coordinate research on national care systems to understand why care systems proved inefficient in providing care and protecting care workers. Project teams will collect and analyze large and innovative data sets on the care industries in these countries. By providing a unified approach to studying a fractured care system across countries, this research project will make a significant contribution to the literature on the care industry. The results of this research project will provide important inputs into policies to improve care as well as the care labor market. The results of this research will also help to establish the U.S. as a global leader in care giving research and policy.The project will study the matrix of fragmented and uncoordinated care provision and identify polices and regulations that shape care and its provision at different levels of governance. This cross-national study will explore four aspects of the care market: (i) the impact of the pandemic on needs and modalities of care provision; (ii) labor conditions and rights in a post pandemic world; (iii) care as a strategic dimension and pillar for public policies on social infrastructure rebuilding; and (iv) care giving strategies when the state fails. Brazil, Colombia, Canada, France, UK, and US will serve as test beds and provide variation in societal characteristics crucial to understanding the different configurations of care across national governance, welfare regimes, health-care systems’, and jurisdiction over health policy. The research results will provide major inputs into the formulation and implementation of care giving and care labor market policies in the world. It will thus not only help to improve care but also establish the US as a global leader in care giving.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.