The Care Work System as a Fundamental Cause of Economic Inequalities

这个项目研究了照顾责任的社会组织如何塑造社会中的经济不平等。在家庭、学校、养老院或医院中为儿童或成人提供护理的基本工作通常会给护理者带来巨大的经济成本。带薪护理工作的薪酬通常比其他需要同等技能水平或证书的工作低得多，学者们将这种经济代价称为带薪护理工作的惩罚。无薪照护者还会产生无薪照护工作惩罚，这是指当照护者更换或辞职，或减少工作时间以照顾家庭和社区中的人时，与提供无薪照护相关的经济成本。本项目全面考察了有偿和无偿护理处罚是如何以及为什么出现的，它们的后果是什么，以及如何减轻这些后果。该项目包括一项有针对性的传播计划，以便与相关群体分享结果并为决策提供信息。该项目利用了最先进的统计回归分析和来自三个国家和四十年（20世纪80年代至2010年代）的高质量面板调查数据集。分析解决了三个核心问题：(1)提供有偿和无偿的护理工作如何影响个人的经济成果；(2)与护理工作相关的经济惩罚如何通过人口特征和社会阶层联系起来和/或缓和经济不平等；(3)社会政策如何缓和这两者。迄今为止的研究将有偿和无偿护理工作的惩罚分开对待，产生了严重的知识空白，限制了对这两种类型护理工作中经济惩罚的相互依赖性、共存性和协同作用的理解。这种碎片化也使得很难解读个人护理工作惩罚在多大程度上影响了人口特征和社会阶层之间更广泛的人口层面的经济不平等。该项目首次提供了全面的实证估计，考察了护理工作惩罚对理解经济不平等原因的重要性，并为理解护理社会政策和基础设施如何缓解或加剧经济不平等提供了新的见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project examines how the social organization of caregiving responsibilities shapes economic inequalities in society. The essential work of providing care for children or adults in homes, schools, nursing homes, or hospitals often comes at a significant economic cost to the caregiver. Paid care jobs typically pay significantly less than other jobs requiring the same skill level or credentials, an economic toll scholars call the paid care work penalty. Unpaid caregivers also incur an unpaid care work penalty, which refers to the economic costs associated with providing unpaid care incurred when caregivers change or quit jobs, or reduce work hours to provide care for those in their families and communities. This project comprehensively examines how and why paid and unpaid care penalties emerge, what their consequences are, and how to mitigate them. The project includes a targeted dissemination plan to share results with relevant constituencies and inform decision-making.The project leverages state-of-the-art statistical regression analyses and high-quality panel survey datasets from three countries and four decades (1980s–2010s). Analyses address three central questions: (1) how providing care work, both paid and unpaid, shapes individuals’ economic outcomes, (2) how economic penalties associated with care work are linked and/or moderate economic inequalities by demographic characteristics and social class, and (3) how social policies moderate both. Research to date has treated paid and unpaid care work penalties separately, generating critical knowledge gaps that limit the understanding of the interdependencies, co-occurrence, and synergies driving economic penalties in both types of care work. This fragmentation also makes it difficult to decipher how much individual care work penalties impact population-level economic inequalities across demographic characteristics and social class more broadly. The project provides the first comprehensive empirical estimates that examine the significance of care work penalties in understanding the causes of economic inequalities and provides new insights to understand how care social policy and infrastructure can mitigate or exacerbate them.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.