From Newsweek · · 2m
Care is infrastructure, not a favor
748 million people are out of the workforce doing care that no economic measure ever counts.
In brief
748 million people are out of the workforce doing care that no economic measure ever counts. Care belongs in economic planning alongside roads and electricity, because without it people cannot work, learn, or stay independent. Originally reported by Newsweek.
Everyone needs care
Young, sick, disabled, old: at some point every person depends on someone else. Yet the care that keeps people independent is still filed under private family duty.
“Everyone depends on care.”
748 million people, missing
In 2023 the ILO counted 748 million people outside the global labor force because of care responsibilities. 708 million of them were women.
Not just family policy
Care gets sorted into health or social services budgets. Its effects run straight through the labor market, productivity, and household income.
Someone always absorbs it
When care is out of reach, the cost does not vanish. A parent leaves a job, an adult takes a day off for appointments, a relative picks up the daily tasks.
A $411 billion blind spot
WHO estimates at least a billion people have vision impairment that was preventable or is still unaddressed. The yearly productivity loss runs to $411 billion.
“availability, affordability, and awareness”
How a health need becomes care
An older person who cannot see well enough to shop or cook safely needs a driver, then a cook, then a manager of daily life. Conventional measures record none of it.
“What begins as a health need can become a caregiving responsibility”
Same pattern, every form
No affordable childcare and parents lose jobs. No long term care and families fill the gap. No cheap clinic and small problems grow into expensive ones.
Treat it like roads
We call electricity and digital networks infrastructure because they let people and businesses function. Care does the same work and deserves the same label.
“This is why I believe care should be understood as economic infrastructure.”
Solutions exist, access doesn't
Most causes of vision loss have proven, cheap fixes. WHO reports two of three people in low income countries who need glasses cannot get them.
Who has to move
Governments fund community services and local workforces, employers offer caregiver benefits and flexibility, technology closes distance. And measurement has to count unpaid work.
“If we measure only the hours someone spends in paid employment, we miss many of the conditions that make those hours possible.”
What to remember
Care belongs in economic planning alongside roads and electricity, because without it people cannot work, learn, or stay independent.
