Valuing the Contributions of Family Caregivers to the Care Economy

In their journal article, Valuing the Contributions of Family Caregivers to the Care Economy, Janet Fast, Norah Keating, Karen Duncan, and Choong Kim argue that the ‘care crisis’ will be intractable as long as unpaid family care work remains firmly in the ‘informal’ economy. One means of making this invisible work visible is to ascribe a monetary value to it. Using data from Statistics Canada’s 2018 General Social Survey, the researchers apply a descriptive, backward stepwise regression and dominance analyses to examine the distribution of care responsibilities among caregivers. These calculations value unpaid care work at between $97.1 billion and $112.7 billion per year.

Janet Fast was on the advisory board for Care Economies in Context until her passing in 2024. Norah Keating is also a member of the Care Economies in Context advisory board.

Citation

Fast, J., Duncan, K.A., Keating, N.C. et al. Valuing the Contributions of Family Caregivers to the Care Economy. J Fam Econ Iss 45, 236–249 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-023-09899-8

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the monetary value of Canadians’ family care work, to highlight inequalities within the family care sector and place this work within the care economy. Using Statistics Canada’s 2018 General Social Survey, we estimated the replacement cost of the 5.7 billion hours of respondents’ care work at between $97.1 billion and $112.7 billion. We used descriptive, backward stepwise regression and dominance analyses to examine the distribution of care responsibilities among caregivers. Caregivers comprised 22.1% of the sample (6.8 million Canadians). Living arrangement explained most (81-83%) of the variance in the value of unpaid care work, followed by generation (14-15%), income (2%) and gender (1-2%). These findings provide powerful evidence of the economic value of family care work and of the inequalities among family caregivers in the magnitude of their contributions. Monetizing the value of family care makes it more visible, locates it in the context of the broader care economy and establishes its relationship to the much more visible and valued realm of paid care work. This contextualization also responds to global action plans and resolutions urging governments to create systems of long-term and continuing care for people with chronic conditions and disabilities rather than imposing sole responsibility on unpaid caregivers.