The Impact of Basic Income on the Gendered Division of Paid Care Work

The aim of this chapter is to discuss how the introduction of basic income (henceforth BI) would influence the evaluation and gendered distribution of care work, and especially paid care work. Providing an income to all its members on an individual basis, without means-test or the requirement to be in the labor market, BI offers every citizen access to a guaranteed income, regardless of marital or employment status. Despite the fundamental and universal importance of care, the responsibility of providing care and the necessity of receiving care have not been sufficiently recognized and rewarded during the development of welfare states. Providing care has been further problematized as during this development, eligibility for social security benefits has been connected to the employment status of claimants. It is expected, and is sometimes hoped, that BI will to some extent untangle the links between welfare and labor and enhance the recognition and valuation of a wide variety of unpaid activities, including care work, which are currently carried out mostly unpaid and largely by women. It is also expected that BI will address the problem of undervaluation of paid care work in the labor market. But what kind of impacts would BI as an innovative scheme for providing income guarantee have on care work? More specifically, by examining the process in which care work has become partly commodified, monetary remunerated and regulated by the government with the introduction of the Japanese Long Term Care Insurance Act (LTCI) in 2000, this chapter aims to investigate how BI would impact on restructuring the increasingly stratified Japanese care labor market.