IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v561y1999i1p39-51.html

The Cost of Caring

Author

Listed:
  • Paula England

    (University of Arizona)

  • Nancy Folbre

    (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)

Abstract

Caring work involves providing a face-to-face service to recipients in jobs such as child care, teaching, therapy, and nursing. Such jobs offer low pay relative to their requirements for education and skill. What explains the penalty for doing caring work? Because caring labor is associated with women, cultural sexism militates against recognizing the value of the work. Also, the intrinsic reward people receive from helping others may allow employers to fill the jobs for lower pay. Caring labor creates public goods--widespread benefits that accrue even to those who pay nothing. For example, if children learn skills and discipline from teachers, the children's future employers benefit, with no market mechanism to make the pay given to care workers reflect these benefits. Even when the public or not-for-profit sectors do step in to hire people to provide such services for those too poor to pay, the pay is limited by how much decision makers really care about the poor. Finally, the fact that people feel queasy about putting a price on something as sacred as care limits the pay offered--as paradoxical as it is to pay less for something when it is seen as infinitely valuable!

Suggested Citation

  • Paula England & Nancy Folbre, 1999. "The Cost of Caring," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 561(1), pages 39-51, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:561:y:1999:i:1:p:39-51
    DOI: 10.1177/000271629956100103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271629956100103
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/000271629956100103?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Duncan, Greg J & Holmlund, Bertil, 1983. "Was Adam Smith Right after All? Another Test of the Theory of Compensating Wage Differentials," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(4), pages 366-379, October.
    2. Barry, Janis, 1985. "Women Production Workers: Low Pay and Hazardous Work," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 262-265, May.
    3. Randall K. Filer, 1985. "Male-Female Wage Differences: The Importance of Compensating Differentials," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 38(3), pages 426-437, April.
    4. Macpherson, David A & Hirsch, Barry T, 1995. "Wages and Gender Composition: Why Do Women's Jobs Pay Less?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(3), pages 426-471, July.
    5. Paula England & Lori Reid & Barbara Kilbourne, 1996. "The effect of the sex composition of jobs on starting wages in an organization: Findings from the NLSY," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 33(4), pages 511-521, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liepmann, Hannah & Hegewisch, Ariane, 2025. "Revisiting Occupational Segregation and the Valuation of Women’s Work," IZA Discussion Papers 18291, IZA Network @ LISER.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eleonora Matteazzi & Ariane Pailhé & Anne Solaz, 2013. "Does Part-Time Employment Widen the Gender Wage Gap? Evidence from Twelve European Countries," Working Papers 293, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    2. Drasch, Katrin & Abraham, Martin, 2019. "Compensating wage differentials and the labor market re-entry of mothers: Evidence from a factorial survey," SocArXiv vap6x, Center for Open Science.
    3. Simisola Johnson, 2022. "Women deserve better: A discussion on COVID‐19 and the gendered organization in the new economy," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 639-649, March.
    4. Christie, Pamela & Shannon, Michael, 2001. "Educational attainment and the gender wage gap: evidence from the 1986 and 1991 Canadian censuses," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 165-180, April.
    5. Wissmann, Daniel, 2020. "Finally a Smoking Gun," Discussion Papers in Economics 73026, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    6. Töpfer, Marina, 2017. "Detailed RIF decomposition with selection: The gender pay gap in Italy," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 26-2017, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    7. François Rycx & Ilan Tojerow, 2004. "Rent sharing and the gender wage gap in Belgium," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 25(3/4), pages 279-299, April.
    8. Tugce, Cuhadaroglu, 2013. "My Group Beats Your Group: Evaluating Non-Income Inequalities," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-49, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    9. Tadashi Sakai & Naomi Miyazato, 2014. "Who values the family-friendly aspects of a job? Evidence from the Japanese labour market," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 397-413, September.
    10. Daniela Andrén & Thomas Andrén, 2015. "Gender and occupational wage gaps in Romania: from planned equality to market inequality?," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-27, December.
    11. Sheree Gibb & David Fergusson & L. Horwood & Joseph Boden, 2014. "The Effects of Parenthood on Workforce Participation and Income for Men and Women," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 14-26, March.
    12. Alena Bicakova & Stepan Jurajda, 2014. "The Quiet Revolution and the Family: Gender Composition of Tertiary Education and Early Fertility Patterns," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp504, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    13. Han, Seungjin & Yamaguchi, Shintaro, 2015. "Compensating wage differentials in stable job matching equilibrium," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 36-45.
    14. Minhaj Mahmud & Italo A Gutierrez & Krishna B Kumar & Shanthi Nataraj, 2021. "What Aspects of Formality Do Workers Value? Evidence from a Choice Experiment in Bangladesh," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 35(2), pages 303-327.
    15. Cael Warren & Raymond Robertson, 2011. "Globalization, Wages, and Working Conditions: A Case Study of Cambodian Garment Factories," Working Papers id:4505, eSocialSciences.
    16. Hwang, Hae-shin & Mortensen, Dale T & Reed, W Robert, 1998. "Hedonic Wages and Labor Market Search," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(4), pages 815-847, October.
    17. William J. Carrington & Kenneth R. Troske, 1998. "Sex Segregation in U.S. Manufacturing," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 51(3), pages 445-464, April.
    18. Mora, Toni & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2009. "The job satisfaction gender gap among young recent university graduates: Evidence from Catalonia," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 581-589, August.
    19. Mehrotra, Santosh & Parida, Jajati K., 2017. "Why is the Labour Force Participation of Women Declining in India?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 360-380.
    20. Jaume Garcia Villar & Pedro J. Hernández & Ángel López-Nicolás, 2002. "An investigation of the relationship between job characteristics and the gender wage gap," Economics Working Papers 627, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:561:y:1999:i:1:p:39-51. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.