As women moved into the formal labor force in large numbers over the last forty years, care work – traditionally provided primarily by women – has increasingly shifted from the family arena to the market. Child care, elder care, care for the disabled, and home care now account for a growing segment of low-wage work in the United States, and demand for such work will only increase as the baby boom generation ages. But the expanding market provision of care has created new economic anxieties and raised pointed questions: Why do women continue to do most care work, both paid and unpaid? Why does care work remain low paid when the quality of care is so highly valued? How effective and equitable are public policies toward dependents in the United States? In For Love and Money, an interdisciplinary team of experts explores the theoretical dilemmas of care provision and provides an unprecedented empirical overview of the looming problems for the care sector in the United States. Drawing on diverse disciplines and areas of expertise, For Love and Money develops an innovative framework to analyze existing care policies and suggest potential directions for care policy and future research. Contributors Paula England, Nancy Folbre, and Carrie Leana explore the range of motivations for caregiving, such as familial responsibility or limited job prospects, and why both love and money can be efficient motivators. They also examine why women tend to specialize in the provision of care, citing factors like job discrimination, social pressure, or the personal motivation to provide care reported by many women. Suzanne Bianchi, Nancy Folbre, and Douglas Wolf estimate how much unpaid care is being provided in the United States and show that low-income families rely more on unpaid family members for their child and for elder care than do affluent families. With low wages and little savings, these families often find it difficult to provide care and earn enough money to stay afloat. Candace Howes, Carrie Leana and Kristin Smith investigate the dynamics within the paid care sector and find problematic wages and working conditions, including high turnover, inadequate training and a “pay penalty” for workers who enter care jobs. These conditions have consequences: poor job quality in child care and adult care also leads to poor care quality. In their chapters, Janet Gornick, Candace Howes and Laura Braslow provide a systematic inventory of public policies that directly shape the provision of care for children or for adults who need personal assistance, such as family leave, child care tax credits and Medicaid-funded long-term care. They conclude that income and variations in states’ policies are the greatest factors determining how well, and for whom, the current system works. Despite the demand for care work, very little public policy attention has been devoted to it. Only three states, for example, have enacted paid family leave programs. Paid or unpaid, care costs those who provide it. At the heart of For Love and Money is the understanding that the quality of care work in the United States matters not only for those who receive care but also for society at large, which benefits from the nurturance and maintenance of human capabilities. As care work gravitates from the family to the formal economy, this volume clarifies the pressing need for America to fundamentally rethink its care policies and increase public investment in this increasingly crucial sector.

The COVID pandemic has shaken the material and social foundations of the world more than any event in recent history and has highlighted and exacerbated a longstanding crisis of care. While these challenges may be freshly visible to the public, they are not new. Over the last three decades, a growing body of care scholarship has documented the inadequacy of the social organization of care around the world, and the effect of the devaluation of care on workers, families, and communities. In this volume, a diverse group of care scholars bring their expertise to bear on this recent crisis. In doing so, they consider the ways in which the existing social organization of care in different countries around the globe amplified or mitigated the impact of COVID. They also explore the global pandemic's impact on the conditions of care and  its role in exacerbating deeply rooted gender, race, migration, disability, and other forms of inequality.

As millions of baby boomers retire and age in the coming years, more American families will confront difficult choices about the long-term care of their loved ones. The swelling ranks of the disabled and elderly who need such care—including home care, adult day care, or a nursing home stay—are faced with a strained, inequitable and expensive system. How will American society and policy adapt to this demographic transition? In Universal Coverage of Long-Term Care in the United States, editors Nancy Folbre and Douglas Wolf and an expert group of care researchers assess the current U.S. long-term care policies and exercise what can be learned from other countries facing similar care demands. After the high-profile suspension of the Obama Administration’s public long-term insurance program in 2011, Robert Hudson and Howard Gleckman provide concrete suggestions for lowering the cost and improving the quality of long-term care coverage in America. In a deeply personal and empirically rigorous analysis, family care expert Carol Levine draws crucial lessons from her experience as a caregiver for her ailing husband. She sheds light on the often fraught interactions that occur between the formal care system and family caregivers and analyzes how public policy can best support long-term family care. The volume next examines recent reforms in other developed countries and finds valuable lessons for American policy-makers. Contributors David Bell and Alison Bowes discuss the provision of personal care services in Scotland, which have been publicly financed since 2002. Their analysis shows that the new program reduced costs improved efficiency and allowed more recipients to receive care. The volume assesses the political and institutional prospects for moving towards a truly universal long-term care system in the United States. Robyn Stone provides a sobering overview of the formal, paid long-term care workforce in America, which is in crisis due to increasing demand and a shortage of qualified workers. Economist Leonard Burman focuses on public finances of the long-term care system, which will come under increasing strain as more Americans rely on Medicaid to pay for their long-term care. In the volume’s concluding chapter, Folbre and Wolf summarize criticisms of existing long-term care policies and outline particular reforms that can move the United States toward a universal system of long-term care insurance. Universal Coverage of Long-Term Care in the United States provides an essential resource on how to improve the long-term care sector in America and helps advance the national debate on this pressing topic. This volume is available for free download on the Foundation’s website, as are the volume’s individual chapters.