Careworn: the economic history of caring labor

Jane Humphries

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Economists ignore caring labor since most is provided unpaid. Disregard is unjust, theoretically indefensible, and probably misleading. Valuation requires estimates of time spent and the replacement or opportunity costs of that time. I use the maintenance costs of British workers, costs which cover both the material inputs into upkeep and the domestic services needed to turn commodities into livings, to isolate the costs of paid domestic labor. I then impute the value of unpaid domestic labor from these market equivalents, and aggregate across households without domestic servants. Historically, unpaid domestic labor represented c. 20 percent of total income, a contribution that suggests the need to revise some standard narratives.

JEL-codes: N00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2024-06-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hme
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in The Journal of Economic History, 5, June, 2024, 84(2), pp. 319 - 351. ISSN: 0022-0507

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:122725

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