Discounted labour? Disaggregating care work in comparative perspective

• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Date: 01 June 2017
• Author: Naomi LIGHTMAN
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12001

International Labour Review, Vol. 156 (2017), No. 2

Copyright © The author 2017

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2017

* University of Toronto, email: naomi.lightman@mail.utoronto.ca. Funding for this research

was provided by the author’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoc-

toral Fellowship (File No: 756-2015 -0381). Additional support was provided by a SSHRC Partner-

ship Grant on Gender, Migration, and the Work of Care (File No: 895-2012-1021), where the author

holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship. The author wishes to thank Professors Monica Boyd and Ito Peng

for their invaluable help in the preparation of this manuscript.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

Discounted labour? Disaggregating

care work in comparative perspective

Naomi LIGHTMAN*

Abstract. This article contrasts the earnings of high- and low-status care workers

in Canada, the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan (China)

using the micro-data les of the Luxembourg Income Study. By disaggregating

existing denitions of care work, the author identies occupations with lower and

higher degrees of “social closure”, revealing the associated care penalties and care

bonuses cross-nationally. She also empirically measures the extent of similarities

(and differences) between and within care economies in “liberal” and “productiv-

ist developmental” welfare regimes, offering support for the argument that global-

ization has fostered substantial convergence within the international care market.

C

are work, often associated with “women’s work”, is frequently found to be

undervalued and underpaid (e.g. England, Budig and Folbre, 2002; Peng,

2012). Three main explanations are provided for this phenomenon. First, the

characteristics of care workers themselves, including sex, race and nativity sta

-

tus (along with their intersections), lead to labour market disadvantages (Duffy,

2005; Duffy, Albelda and Hammonds, 2013). Second, individuals are negatively

selected into care work based on low levels of education and other human

capital, resulting in lower wages (England, 2005; Isaksen, Devi and Hoch-

schild, 2008). And third, the nature of care work itself devalues earnings, as it

is often disproportionately precarious and part time, female-dominated, and/

or located in the unsubsidized private sector (Budig and Misra, 2010; Folbre,

2008; Lewis and West, 2014).

The majority of existing care-work studies are theoretical, qualitative,

or focused on a single national context (e.g. Mason, 2003; Geisen and Parre-

ñas, 2013). Increasingly, however, care work is being conceptualized within a

International Labour Review244

globalized (or transnational) labour market (Boyd and Pikkov, 2013; Hoch-

schild, 2000), suggesting a need for international comparative analyses, such as

that provided by Budig and Misra (2010). In their seminal article contrasting

earnings in care work cross-nationally, these authors document signicant vari-

ation across 12 countries, including wealthy welfare states, and post-socialist

and developing economies. They nd that sex, other worker characteristics, and

national and policy contexts are each inuential in determining care wages;

while they identify a “care penalty” in the majority of countries, they demon-

strate that there is a “care bonus” for women in Sweden, the Netherlands and

Germany.

Notwithstanding the importance of Budig and Misra’s (2010) ndings,

two pertinent issues are less well captured by their analysis. First, the authors’

denition of care work is very general, conceptualized in terms of face-to-face

human interactions between providers and recipients that develop or main-

tain the capabilities of the recipient (England, Budig and Folbre, 2002). By

combining occupations with very low status (and salaries) and those with very

high status (and, often, matching professional qualications), Budig and Misra

(2010) run the risk of masking important variation within care work. Second,

they focus primarily on North America and Europe, relying on Mexico and Tai-

wan (China) to represent “developing” economies despite their disparate wel-

fare traditions. This leaves space for further examination of whether and how

care provisioning and outcomes are unique within the wealthy “productivist

developmental” countries of East Asia, as suggested by welfare regime schol-

ars (e.g. Kilkey, Lutz and Palenga-Möllenbeck, 2010; Powell and Kim, 2014).

Accordingly, this article builds on the intersection of care work and

welfare regime theory, providing a quantitative analysis of paid care employ-

ment within an international comparative perspective. Specically, I use the

micro-data les of the Luxembourg Income Study to compare the earnings

of high- and low-status care workers in Canada, the United States, Japan, the

Republic of Korea (hereinafter Korea), and Taiwan (China) in order to answer

the following key questions:

•

Does distinguishing between care-work occupations with higher and lower

degrees of “social closure” allow for a more nuanced analysis of any asso-

ciated “care bonus” or “care penalty” cross-nationally?

• To what extent are care economies similar (or different) between and

within “liberal” North American and “productivist developmental” East

Asian welfare regimes or, in other words, have the forces of globalization

fostered substantial convergence within the international care economy?

Ultimately, this article demonstrates a signicant care penalty within low-

status care work and a signicant care bonus for professionals in the elds of

education and health cross-nationally, even while controlling for a host of fac-

tors known to inuence earnings. Its ndings thus reinforce the need to spe-

cify further what is meant by “care” (and consider who is providing which type

of care and where) and suggest that resources and policy ought to be directed