Take care, there is a global care crisis

Would you care elaborating?

The world is going to face a severe shortage of care workers unless policymakers sit up and take note, and invest more — preferably double the funds earmarked for the care sector, according to a recent assessment from the UN’s labour watchdog ILO.

Pardon me, who exactly is a care worker?

Well, if you ask the ILO, there are unpaid and paid care work. Two kinds of work fall in the unpaid category, and these overlap suitably. First, there are the direct, personal and relational care activities. Here we talk about, say, a mother feeding a baby or a son nursing his ill parents. And indirect care activities include cooking and cleaning and other household chores. Now, paid care work involves healthcare or other professionals undertaking jobs where they take care of patients, aged people and people with similar challenges and vulnerabilities.

So, is ILO saying there aren’t enough care workers around?

Yes, the focus is on the shortfall in paid care — nurses, teachers, doctors and personal care workers. Already, there are over 380 million such workers, and they account for 11.5 per cent of total global jobs. But that’s not enough given the pace with which populations are growing, ageing and succumbing to diseases.

Unpaid care work is care work provided without a monetary reward, by unpaid carers. Unpaid care is considered as work and is thus a crucial dimension of the world of work. Paid care work is performed for pay or profit by care workers. They comprise a wide range of personal service workers, such as nurses, teachers, doctors and personal care workers. Domestic workers, who provide both direct and indirect care in households, are also part of the care workforce.

Oh, how bad is the situation?

Worse than we imagined earlier. In 2015, show ILO estimates, 2.1 billion people were in need of care (1.9 billion under age 15 and 0.2 billion senior citizens) and this number would only go up, touching 2.3 billion by 2030. That’s a significant increase considering the way healthcare improves, changes in social dynamics and the way the concept of family changes. Importantly, the growth in small (nuclear) families and the so-called fragmentation of societies would mean more people in need for care.

Sample this data from ILO: As we speak, nuclear families account for the highest share of the world’s working-age population — 43.5 per cent or 2.4 billion people. And this is only going to grow, say experts.

So, what’s to be done?

Governments and businesses must stop being lethargic and formulate “transformative” policies to provide “decent” care work. ILO estimates that this will need doubling investment in the care economy. But such efforts will help the world in myriad other ways. For one, it could lead to a total of 475 million jobs by 2030, which means 269 million new jobs.

There should also be a correction in pay for care workers, right?

You said it. In fact, in countries such as India, care workers such as nurses and their ilk are alarmingly underpaid. Nurses and midwives constitute the biggest occupational group in healthcare, and nursing remains the most feminised of the healthcare occupations, according to the ILO. Low, poor wages force them to try multiple jobs, more shifts or working overtime. Such practices not only endanger the quality of care work but also impact work-life balance of these workers. So any robust policy should promote social justice and gender equality. Equally important, unpaid care work deserves more policy attention.

How?

The ILO and several rights agencies now consider unpaid care as proper work. The ILO cites a survey conducted in 64 countries (representing 66.9 per cent of the world’s working-age people), which shows each day unpaid care work constitutes 16.4 billion hours. That’s two billion people working eight hours per day — with no remuneration, of course. If you put a price to that work, that’s $11 trillion — 9 per cent of global GDP. And, most of this is household work (81.8 per cent).

And these are done by women, mostly.

Women do three-quarters of unpaid care work. According to the ILO, that’s 76.2 per cent of the total of hours spent on such work. Which is why it is important to have more childcare and elder-care services so that more women are free to pursue careers they want to and contribute more to greater common good.

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