We Need a Care Package!

In a Left Hook Economics blog post for Dollars & Sense magazine, Nancy Folbre maps out a set of interlocking federal policies for achieving an economy that actually values care work rather than punishes those who provide it. This “care package” includes policies that have already proven to be effective in different cities and states across the U.S., namely, universal child care, paid family and medical leave plus long-term care support, and a monthly child allowance. Enshrining these approaches in federal policy would reduce structural inequities and transform the economy.

Nancy Folbre is Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a member of the Care Economies in Context advisory board.

Citation

Folbre, N. (2026). We need a care package! Dollars & Sense. https://www.dollarsandsense.org/we-need-a-care-package/

Excerpt

In the United States, we rely on a patchwork of underfunded programs, unpaid labor (mostly by women), and heroic improvisation by families trying to hold things together. We treat care as a private burden rather than a public good. And then we act surprised when the system produces stress, inequality, and declining confidence in the future.

Three bold, interconnected proposals—universal child care, paid family and medical leave plus long-term care support, and a monthly child allowance—would transform life for American families. Together, they form a coherent package that addresses caregiving at every stage of life: from infancy through old age. Other wealthy nations have already figured this out. It’s long past time the United States did too.

These proposals would work together to give families the flexibility they need. They build on policies that have already been put in place by individual states or experimented with at the federal level. They are game-changers because they are all conceived as free, universal benefits that would be funded by taxes on income from capital, rather than from labor.