The Escalating Cost of Care Services

  So much talk about inflation–but not much about its disparate impacts. Nor do differences in the rate of price increases between “necessities” and “luxuries” get much attention.  Data that I downloaded from the  Data Finder  of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics  shows that price of three major care services–day care and preschool, nursing homes and adult daycare, and… Read more →

Justice in the Balance

Instead of trying to walk the tightrope known as work family balance, maybe we should seek work family justice—something we all deserve rather than something we are easily blamed for not achieving on our own. This reformulation, inspired by a great book by Caitlyn Collins, Making Motherhood Work, defined a plenary session of the Work Family Research Network conference June… Read more →

From Dobbs v. Jackson to Rights v. Obligations

Lest we forget the time-hallowed misogyny fueling anti-abortion activism, the cartoon character known as Matt Gaetz pops up to remind us in Trumpian fashion that women who support abortion rights are too ugly to need them. At the other extreme, the NYT’s token conservative Ross Douthat is utterly convinced that feminists are over-reacting, because many opponents of abortion today (including… Read more →

Social Capital vs. Social Climate

Social capital is a delightfully contradictory concept, which explains why academics kind of like it: So much room for elaboration and disputation, both qualitative and quantitative!   Personally, I like the Simple English Wikipedia definition, which synchs with my own emphasis on pro-social motivations for care provision: “Social capital is the willingness of people to help each other. It often replaces money… Read more →

Seizing the Moment

Seizing the “Moment” for the Global Care Agenda: From Theory to Practice International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) event, January 25, 2022   Many thanks to IAFFE in general and Mary Borrowman in particular for organizing this forum. Here are my preliminary remarks—subject to revision: I feel grateful to be a part of a long international trajectory of socialist feminism… Read more →

The Child Tax Credit, Singed if Not Combusted

The smoldering heat originates mostly from the coal-fired wealth of Joe Manchin, the Senator from West Virginia who continues to oppose the child tax credit on the grounds that mothers should be required to “work” (meaning, earn money) in order to get assistance. Still, it’s pretty clear that this keystone of the Build Back Better act, this policy that dramatically… Read more →

Gender, Bargaining, and Build Back Better

Some Notes from Panel on The Economics of Gender and Households  Southern Economic Association  November 22, 2021 This, a great  opportunity to cross-fertilize with some excellent economists who represent a variety of different theoretical and empirical approaches to gender and households. At this point in time, Biden’s Build Back Better plan is moving through a torturous political process. Whatever you… Read more →

Why JoeCare Has a Chance

Happy Inauguration Day.  We now have a president who wears a mask. Everywhere. Which is something to be grateful for. Hope was that the pandemic would help raise awareness of just how much we depend on care work. This hope grows. A quick list of the three major care-related proposals President Biden has advanced so far:   More support (to… Read more →

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