Nancy Folbre

Care Talk 2.0

18 August 2023

Welcome to Care Talk 2.0! In February 2008, economist Nancy Folbre launched the original Care Talk blog to reflect on research and policies regarding paid and unpaid carework. Written in a style that made material accessible to journalists, policymakers, and students as well as more seasoned researchers, the blog began with a focus on how to measure the economic contributions of unpaid care, the limitations of commercial models for care provision, and the problems that plague US systems of care provision.

The Escalating Cost of Care Services

18 August 2022

Price of three major care services–day care and preschool, nursing homes and adult daycare, and medical care services, have risen much faster since 1998 than the price of the “all items” basket of goods and services that serves as the primary benchmark for analysis of inflation

Justice in the Balance

26 July 2022

Instead of trying to walk the tightrope known as work family balance, maybe we should seek work family justice—something we all deserve rather than something we are easily blamed for not achieving on our own.

From Dobbs v. Jackson to Rights v. Obligations

24 July 2022

What’s wrong with Ross Douthat’s interpretation of the world in general and abortion rights in particular?

Social Capital vs. Social Climate

6 July 2022

Social capital is a delightfully contradictory concept, which explains why academics kind of like it: So much room for elaboration and disputation, both qualitative and quantitative!

Seizing the Moment

26 January 2022

Seizing the “Moment” for the Global Care Agenda: From Theory to Practice. International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) event, January 25, 2022

Gender Economics and the Meaning of Discrimination

9 January 2022

Shelly Lundberg gave a terrific paper at the session on Identity, Culture, and the Economics of Gender at the Allied Social Science Association Meetings, January 8, 2022, and this is a distillation of my comments on it as discussant.

The Child Tax Credit, Singed if Not Combusted

9 January 2022

Joe Manchin, Senator from West Virginia, oppose the child tax Credit on the grounds that mothers should be required to “work” in order to get assistance.

Gender, Bargaining, and Build Back Better

22 November 2021

Some Notes from Panel on The Economics of Gender and Households, Southern Economic Association, November 22, 2021

Why JoeCare Has a Chance

20 January 2021

Happy Inauguration Day. We now have a president who wears a mask. Everywhere. Which is something to be grateful for.

Republican Women, Intersected

18 January 2021

A much larger percentage of women than men voted for Joe Biden: The race/gender intersection proved more salient: 93% of Black women voted for Biden, reflecting long-standing historical allegiances, Biden’s affiliation with Obama, and visceral dislike of Trump.

Manifold Exploitations

18 January 2021

A more general theory of exploitation highlights the multiple dimensions of institutional power that make it possible for members of some overlapping groups to capture an unfair share of gains from cooperation, leaving others especially vulnerable.