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. This study aims to provide an integrated analysis of care work penalties across three countries: the United Staes, the United Kingdom, and Germany. 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 using data from the United Kingdom show that the impact of care work penalties on gender inequality is substantial and largely driven by economic penalties associated with unpaid childcare. Future analyses will incorporate all three countries and analyze more extensively how care penalties impact racial and class inequalities among women.
Presented by:
Pilar Gonalons-Pons (University of Pennsylvania)
Date & time:
November 26, 2025 12:30 pm - November 26, 2025 1:30 pm
Venue:
Online
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