Wednesday 6 February 2019

Unpaid care what is it worth? Get the academic facts


According to new research from Carers UK this week. Each day 600 people have to quit work to care

for a relative. Their policy library has comment on UK government policy for carers including benefits and

This research briefing from the UK parliament provides an excellent introduction to the data and UK government policy. It includes the statistics that in 2018 there were around 6.5 million carers contributing 65 million in unpaid care. Women make up 58% of carers.

For datasets on unpaid care. Try the Office for National Statistics which has some information in trends and characteristics of carers

In 2017 they published this useful article on the costs of unpaid care which has mappings on its amounts with the amount spent by the government on social care. In 2016 they also used time use data to show women spent 60% extra time on unpaid work than men. This include housework as well as unpaid care

For a wider international picture try OECD data

This has gender breakdowns for over 15 nations on time spent in unpaid work. this includes housework as well as care. In 2015 the gap between men and women in terms of this was largest for Mexico. The site also has this paper which discusses gender imbalances in unpaid care

For larger recent data sets OECD.stat https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=54757 has spreadsheets on paid and unpaid labour for oecd nations. Subscribers to OECDilibrary can download


finally do check the ilo website for information on care. This report found that womn in asia pacific do 4 times as much unpaid care work as men

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