Defining the Boundaries between Unpaid Labor and Unpaid Caregiving: Review of the Social and Health Sciences Literature

Abstract

Informal unpaid caregiving is a critical factor when forming and implementing development policy in and on behalf of developing nations because of how it can affect all aspects of economic and human development for all society, not only women and families. Yet by being treated as an undifferentiated concept from unpaid labor, caregiving remains at the margins in development research and policy. Drawing from different social science and health theories, we present the theoretical roots of caregiving research. We propose that although unpaid caregiving scholarship is embedded in the scholarship of unpaid labor, unpaid caregiving must be defined as a distinct form of unpaid labor. We present the similarities and differences between the two concepts and outline and discuss avenues for extending the frameworks that have been used in the social and health sciences to explore unpaid labor to study specific aspects of caregiving.

Keywords:

• Caregiving
• Care
• Unpaid labor
• Gender

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Arvonne Fraser, David Blaney, and the anonymous reviewers and editors for comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes

Burden is the technical term used in health to describe the physical, emotional, and economic load or stress caregivers bear and that may result in negative health and economic outcomes for caregivers.

Two strands of thought have dominated the field of economic anthropology. Aligning with neoclassical economics, formalist economic anthropology sees economics as the acquisition and use of scarce material resources. In contrast, substantivist economic anthropology, proposed originally by Karl Polanyi, argues that the study of economics involves the social and cultural contexts in which individuals make a living.

A thorough review of the how caregiving research stemming from the health sciences and conducted in the Global North can contribute to the study of caregiving in the Global South is beyond the scope of this paper, but will be addressed in a subsequent paper.

These time-use studies are based on the International Classification of Activities for Time-Use Statistics. They use three main categories into which all human activity falls. The first is the System of National Accounts, which is the internationally agreed upon system for calculating the Gross Domestic Product. The second is unpaid care, meaning all activities that are productive work but are not included in the Gross Domestic Product. The third category includes all activities not considered to be work, like leisure.

The Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-163) aims to reduce the financial and health burden for some by providing financial stipends for caregivers of service members who are now veterans and who were severely injured in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and who need assistance with Activities of Daily Living or supervision or protection because of the residual effects of their injuries.