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Global Care Crisis - ILO

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July 05, 2018

Why in news?

UN’s ILO cautions of a severe shortage of care workers.

Who is a care worker?

  • According to International Labour Organization (ILO), there are unpaid and paid care works.
  • Two kinds of work fall in the unpaid category, and these overlap suitably.
  • There are the direct, personal and relational care activities.
  • E.g. mother feeding a baby or a son nursing his ill parents.
  • Indirect care activities include cooking and cleaning and other household chores.
  • On the other hand, paid care work involves healthcare or other professionals.
  • It includes nurses, teachers, doctors and personal care workers.
  • They take care of patients, aged people and people with similar challenges and vulnerabilities.

What is ILO's observation?

  • There is a shortfall in paid care - the nurses, teachers, doctors and personal care workers.
  • Already, there are over 380 million such workers.
  • They account for 11.5% of total global jobs.
  • But this is not enough given the pace of population growth, ageing and diseases.

What are the driving factors?

  • In 2015, ILO estimates showed that around 2 billion people were in need of care.
  • This comprised of 1.9 billion under age 15 and 0.2 billion senior citizens.
  • This number is estimated to go up, touching 2.3 billion by 2030.
  • This is a significant increase considering the way healthcare improves.
  • Besides, changes in social dynamics and the concept of family are also the reasons.
  • Growth in nuclear families and fragmentation would increase people in need of care.
  • Notably, nuclear families account for the highest share of the world’s working-age population.

What are the shortfalls and possible measures?

  • Policies - Governments and businesses must formulate policies to provide decent care work.
  • ILO estimates that this will need doubling the investment in the care economy.
  • It could lead to a total of 475 million jobs by 2030, which means 269 million new jobs.
  • Pay - In countries such as India, care workers like nurses are alarmingly underpaid.
  • Nurses and midwives constitute the biggest occupational group in healthcare.
  • Nursing remains the most feminised of the healthcare occupations, according to the ILO.
  • Low, poor wages force them to try multiple jobs, more shifts or working overtime.
  • Such practices not only endanger the quality of care work but also impact work-life balance.
  • Any policy in this regard should promote social justice and gender equality.
  • Unpaid work - The ILO and several rights agencies now consider unpaid care as proper work.
  • An ILO survey shows each day unpaid care work constitutes 16.4 billion hours.
  • In other words, two billion people working eight hours per day with no remuneration.
  • If this is assigned a price, it would be $11 trillion i.e. 9% of global GDP.
  • Notably, nearly 80% of this is household work, mostly done by women.
  • There is a need for more childcare and elder-care services so that more women are free to pursue careers.

 

Source: BusinessLine

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