BharatNotes What is Care Economy?
The care economy covers all the work involved in looking after people—children, the elderly, the sick and the able-bodied—so that they can live, learn and work. The ILO defines it as care work, paid and unpaid, direct and indirect, delivered through households, the public sector, markets, non-profits and the social and solidarity economy. Direct care is face-to-face (feeding a child, nursing a patient); indirect care covers enabling tasks like cooking, cleaning and fetching water.
A central feature is that the bulk of care work is unpaid and performed within homes—overwhelmingly by women and girls—and is therefore excluded from GDP, rendering it "invisible" in economic policy.
Why It Matters
Unpaid care work is the hidden foundation of the visible economy: it reproduces and maintains the labour force at no recorded cost. The ILO estimated (2018) that some 16.4 billion hours of unpaid care work were performed worldwide each day—equal to about 2 billion people working full-time without pay—worth roughly 9% of global GDP (≈ US$11 trillion) if valued at minimum wage.
The burden is deeply gendered. Globally, women do about 76% of all unpaid care work (ILO), and an estimated 708 million women are outside the labour force because of care duties (ILO). This "time poverty" depresses female labour-force participation, widens the gender pay gap, and entrenches the feminisation of poverty.
The 5R Framework
To address this, the ILO's Resolution concerning decent work and the care economy (June 2024)—the first global tripartite agreement on the subject—endorsed the 5R framework:
| R | What it means |
|---|---|
| Recognise | Make unpaid care work visible (e.g. via time-use data) |
| Reduce | Cut drudgery through infrastructure—water, LPG, crèches |
| Redistribute | Share care between women and men, and family and State |
| Reward | Ensure decent pay for paid care workers |
| Represent | Give care workers voice and collective bargaining |
Care Economy in India
India's Time Use Survey 2024 (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation) shows the gap persists. Women aged 15-59 spent about 305 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services against 88 minutes for men; in caregiving, female participants averaged roughly 140 minutes versus 74 minutes for men. Female participation in employment-related activity rose to about 25% (from 21.8% in 2019), but remains far below men's ~75%.
On valuation, an SBI research report (2023) estimated the unpaid work of women at about 7.5% of India's GDP (≈ ₹22.7 lakh crore) using 2019 survey data—though estimates vary widely with methodology (the Observer Research Foundation put it nearer 3.1%), underscoring that there is no single official figure.
UPSC Angle
Treat the care economy as an analytical lens for GS1 society and GS2 gender/welfare answers: link it to declining female labour-force participation, gender budgeting, anganwadi and ASHA workers (paid care), and schemes that "reduce" care burdens (Ujjwala for LPG, Jal Jeevan Mission for piped water, crèches). The 5R framework and Time Use Survey statistics are high-value, examiner-friendly tools for value-addition.
Sources: ILO Care Economy portal; MoSPI Time Use Survey 2024; SBI Ecowrap report.
