CARE4CARE POLICY BRIEF SERIES| 3/2022 RECOGNISING AND REWARDING CARE WORK: THE ROLE OF PUBLIC POLICIES PROFESSOR JAYATI University of Massachusetts Amherst, Further articles by Prof. Jayati Ghosh in this series: → Defining care: conceptualisations and particularities → The structure of care work and inequalities among care workers THE SUPPLY OF CARE WORK(ERS) Measurement of the care economy and of the extent of care work presents enormous challenges, for reasons that were noted in the previous article,‘The structure of care work and inequalities among care workers’. It is hard enough to estimate paid care work, since it is provided both in formal institutionalised contexts as well as in more informal settings. But the inclusion of unpaid care makes the task truly challenging. The bulk of direct care as well as much indirect care has historically been provided with­in families, and this remains the case, not only in relatively less developed countries with smaller formal care sectors, but in rich countries as well. This obviously makes it near impossible to measure the supply of care, especially as very few countries conduct time-use surveys that would allow for some estimation of the hours devoted to care in its various forms. A further difficulty is that some activities that clearly form part of the care economy when provid­ed within families and households in an unpaid manner (such as cooking for the family) do not necessarily consti­tute care when they are provided as market services, in the form of chefs and cooks, whether they work in formal or informal establishments or in private homes. Since many of the tasks typically performed in unpaid fashion are essential activities without which society could not continue, the supply of such work tends to rise to meet the demand, even though quality may suf­fer because of the greater time pressures this creates for care providers. As UN Women noted,‘involvement in this work varies greatly across countries depending on the extent and coverage of public services such as water and sanitation, energy, health and childcare. Within coun­tries, there are also significant variations in the amount of unpaid care and domestic work carried out by wom­en based on age, income, location and the presence of young children in the household.’ 1 The difficulty of measuring both care work and the num ­ber of care workers is compounded by the fact that even specific forms of care are often shared across formal and informal settings and providers. Samman et al consider the specific case of child care, and point out that child care services are not just provided by mothers or parents in general:‘many other people are involved as families patch together solutions to the almost universal dilem­ma of how to both care and provide for a family. These range from organised care in schools and nurseries, to 1 UN Women. 2016. Leave No One Behind: A call to action for gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. Report of the UN Sec­retary General’s High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment. New York: UN Women, p. 84.