Labor
Elect for Child Care
What can policy researchers do to help shape the upcoming U.S. debate? I can think of a lot of interesting possibilities
Bargaining up to $15
home care workers joined the national Fight for $15 about a year ago, forming a political coalition with other low-wage workers.
The Best Care Work Reporting of the Year
The British newspaper famous for its courageous investigative journalism on many different fronts wins my prize for the best reporting of the year on paid care work.
When Family-Friendly Journalism Backfires
Poorly–designed policies that may initially appear “family-friendly” can impede progress toward gender equality in two different ways—by making it costly for employers to hire or promote workers suspected of having costly family commitments (e.g. women of childbearing age) or by encouraging workers with such commitments to drop out of paid employment for so long that their prospects of advancement on the job are permanently damaged. In other words, increases in women’s job tenure and/or reductions in work-family stress may be purchased at the expense of women’s earnings and career advancement.
Jobs for Whom?
Despite efforts to increase women’s participation in traditionally male jobs, such as construction, occupational segregation in the U.S. remains significant. Why not advocate for “pink jobs” as well as “green” ones?
The Motherhood Penalty
Most women know that having a child is costly and leaves them vulnerable to poverty. But most probably don’t know how these costs and risks actually measure up, especially considering important differences across women and their families. Even as you read this, highly-skilled researchers are figuring out how to “do the numbers.”
Is it Work?
Steven J. Dubner and Steve Levitt suggest the following: “It’s work if someone else tells you to do it, and leisure if you choose to do it yourself.” This definition makes it sound like neither self-employed nor self-motivated individuals do any work.
Servant Sisters
A guest post by Hande Togrul (handetogrul@yahoo.com), graduate student at the University of Utah.
When a Commodity is Not Exactly a Commodity
Every week, the journal Science complements its published articles with one or more “Perspectives” offering a brief and informal summary of research on an important topic. I was thrilled to be invited to submit one of these recently, and chose to focus on the impact of personal interactions and emotional connections on the economics of care services.
Care and the Commons
Much of my work focuses on the social organization of care. I am especially interested in the parallels between care work and other economic resources that are not privately owned or priced on the market. For more on these parallels– including some videotaped lectures by six great speakers, check out the Forum on Social Wealth.