Decent Jobs Generation Through Investments in the Care Economy: A Policy Framework for Inclusive Labour Markets

Expansion of care services is a long-standing priority demand in advocacy for gender equality, framed dominantly from a labour supply side perspective. The gender distribution of unpaid care work imposes time constraints on women’s labour supply and serves as a source of gender economic gaps. Access to quality care services alleviate women’s time constraints, enabling their improved participation in labour markets and the public sphere. In recent years, an emerging genre of applied policy simulations shift the focus to labour demand outcomes of care services expansion, pointing out to its substantial jobs generation potential given the sectors’ high employment multipliers. This paper traces the evolution of the feminist economics discourse on care from an exclusive focus on alleviation of women’s unpaid work for gender equality, to an expanded framing that also includes investing in care for employment creation, inclusive and sustainable growth. It provides an overview of the so-called “invest in care” studies, their analytical and methodological approaches, and select empirical findings. The assessment that public investment in care services serves as a powerful policy strategy for employment creation and inclusive growth, contributes to macroeconomics debates on full employment.