About Care Talk
Welcome to Care Talk!
This blog was founded by Nancy Folbre to engage researchers, students, journalists, and others interested in the “care sector”– an important part of our economy devoted to the direct care of others through the family, the community, the market, and the state. In collaboration with Jocelyn Olcott and the Revaluing Care in the Global Economy network, the blog now features posts by researchers working in the quantitative and qualitative social sciences as well as the humanities to explore the problems of:
1) how to measure economic contributions made by families and communities;
2) the shortcomings of the standard “business model” based on profit maximization and consumer choice as a means of delivering effective care services through the market;
3) poor institutional design in the U.S. public sector, which often fails to deliver equitable, efficient, or politically sustainable systems of care provision; and
4) the analysis of alternative models for ensuring equitable access to and valuation of both paid and unpaid care.
Care, Affluence, and Development
I am gearing up to attend the annual meetings of the Indian Society of Labour Economics in Mumbai, with support from the Canadian International Development Research Centre.
Try, Try, Try Again
On the referendum in Maine to create the Universal Home Care Program
After the Care Crisis
The opening question of a conference titled “After the Care Crisis” at the University of Pennsylvania on November 15 and 16 2018, was “What would an equitable relationship among care workers, employers, and society look like?” unique in bringing scholars and activists together.
The Carebot Conundrum
I am so much in favor of good care technology, but the risk of bad technology seems to be growing.
The World Bank, Getting Careless
The World Development Report 2019 purports to explore the changing nature of work in the global economy.
Pre-Care-iat?
Guy Standing’s arguments for a universal basic income (UBI) as a way of protecting The Precariat
The Tyranny of (Some) Metrics
This new book by Jerry Z. Muller (Princeton University Press, 2018) does a great job explaining what happens when policy makers rely too heavily on simplistic measures of performance.
The ILO on Care Work and Care Workers
On wages, working conditions and future shortages in paid care employment.
Global Centre of Excellence on Gender Statistics
The first thing I want to say is I love the logo, which I have just sketched here. It’s so… feminine.
Developing Care
A committment by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada
The Book Underway
My forthcoming book on how an analysis of care work complements intersectional political economy
Heroine of the Noisy Revolution
This post is based on my presentation at the session “Inequality, Public Policy, and the Future of Economics: In Memory of Barbara Bergmann,” organized by Diana Strassmann, at the meetings of the American Economic Association in San Francisco, CA, January 5, 2016.
China’s Looming Care Crisis
Guest post by Barbara E. Hopkins, Wright State University.
Work for Profit (or Not)
Most introductory economics texts assume that most of the work performed in the U.S. takes place in profit-maximizing firms. One important exception is Understanding Capitalism.