A Data Infrastructure for Measuring the Care Economy in the U.S.

Despite an increasing need to understand the provision of care, measuring the size, characteristics, and dynamics of the care economy is challenging. This study will assess current data available and will provide conclusions and recommendations on the potential for improving, expanding, and integrating the care data infrastructure to more fully understand the care economy in the United States.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on National Statistics will appoint an ad hoc panel to assess the current data available on the care economy considered broadly, including care givers, care for adults and children, long-term care, and intersections with both the health care and education sectors. As part of its review, the panel will consider the following issues:

• key efforts, questions, and measurement needs for examining the care economy; 
• existing data collection programs, including cross-sectional and longitudinal data sets, and data gaps in those programs, particularly in federal economic statistics;
• the need for standardized definitions for the care economy (along the entire spectrum of human care requirements), caregivers, caregiving, paid and unpaid care, formal and informal markets for care, and the implications of these definitions for measuring the size of the care economy;
• how to conceptualize measures of care needs to capture both intensity of need and what constitutes unmet need;
• methods to measure care provided within extended families and other networks beyond conventional household units; and 
• the potential for using state and federal administrative records, and commercial data in addition to surveys to enhance knowledge of the care economy. 

The study report will provide conclusions and recommendations on the potential for improving, expanding, and integrating the care data infrastructure to more fully understand the care economy in the United States. The report will also provide a roadmap for implementation of the recommendations.

Two members of this study, Dana Wray (Statistics Canada) and Ajit Zacharias (Levy Economics Institute), are also members of the Care Economies in Context project.