The Economics of Caregiving

The Economics of Caregiving

No one ever accuses American policy makers of being ahead of the curve. In fact, they are often decades behind it, especially when it comes to the economic reality for millions of families. A good case in point is our national caregiving policies. What few we actually have are mostly mired in the 1950’s mythology of a two-parent family where Dad goes off to a 40-hour living wage job and Mom stays at home caring for the children, keeping a perfect House Beautiful, with every hair sprayed firmly into place.

However, in the 21st Century real America of 2016, working parents are the norm, stay-at-home mothers are a minority, and juggling how to meet the needs of children while making ends meet is the daily reality.

Let’s take a quick look at that new “normal.” Seven in ten mothers are working in this country. In fact, 64 percent of women with children under the age of 6 are in the paid labor force (it was 39 percent in 1975). Most of these working mothers are doing so out of economic necessity, in an economy which does very little to help these families balance their work-life responsibilities. (Note that work always comes first in this phrase!)

Caregiving makes life not only possible, but it plays a critical role in determining the quality of that life. Everyone needs care at some point in their lives and often at multiple times. Much of that caregiving is un- or under-paid. Even when the caregiver is paid, it is usually for a low, non-living wage. And there is often a gender component to caregiving.

Those last two points are closely connected. Anything that is seen as women’s work – which caregiving clearly is – is undervalued in our economy. In fact, much of caregiving is part of the underground economy – that part of the economy that never makes it into the GDP.

The underground or shadow economy - activities, both legal and illegal - add up to trillions of dollars a year that take place "off the books," out of the gaze of taxmen and government statisticians. The real crime being committed in unpaid caregiving is how the giver is uncompensated for her time and lost opportunities.

There are over 43 million adults in the United States who provide unpaid care to an adult or a child annually. This amounts to an estimated 36 billion unpaid hours of care for just adults. Juggling between the demands of their own job, or sacrificing their job completely, these caregivers are as vulnerable as those they serve. Even those who can afford paid caregiving are saddled with high costs.

Here in New York State, there are more than 2.2 million informal caregivers; we rank third in the nation. In New York City, domestic work forms the “invisible backbone” of the economy and is a workforce that is almost entirely comprised of immigrants, people of color and women.

Let’s look at some numbers from a recent Center for American Progress report:

The Cost of Work-Family Policy Inaction looked at Quantifying the Costs Families Currently Face as a Result of Lacking U.S. Work-Family Policies:

The lack of federal work-family policies in the United States marks the nation as an extreme outlier among other advanced economies. Unlike every other wealthy country in the world, the United States does not guarantee workers the right to paid maternity leave, nor does it guarantee the right to paid leave for any reason at all. Worse still, families in the United States pay a significantly higher price for child care than families in most other comparable economies. This lack of investment in policies to support U.S. working families depresses labor force participation, holds back economic growth, and has negative impacts on families’ well-being.

Every year, as our new analysis shows, working families in the United States lose out on at least $28.9 billion in lost wages because they lack access to affordable child care and paid family and medical leave. This hidden cost includes $8.3 billion in lost wages due to a lack of child care and $20.6 billion in lost wages due to a lack of access to paid family and medical leave.

Measurements of lost wages help demonstrate that there are costs to not having federal policies in place to address issues like affordable child care and paid family and medical leave. While families are often all too aware of the direct costs for goods and services, policymakers rarely address or take into account the hidden costs from lost wages in as great of detail. Policymakers simply cannot create effective work-family policies until they better understand the full costs to working families.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/report/2016/09/22/143877/the-cost-of-inaction  

Let’s examine Child Care in more detail: Nearly half of American households with an employed mother and a child under 5 reported using a paid child-care provider, according to a July report on the economics of child care by the non-partisan public policy research organization, Committee for Economic Development. Yet many families are unable to access affordable care.

"The average weekly cost of care roughly doubled in current dollars between 1997 and 2011", the report stated. "And yet, the share of households receiving assistance from any source to pay for child care declined from 7.3% in 2005 to 6.4% in 2011 (according to the most recent data)."

The average cost of center-based infant care in New York State is $14,508 per year ($16,250 in NYC) – twice the cost of college tuition. Diminished funding, increasing numbers of low wage workers and increasing market rates have strained the capacity of New York State’s low income child care program(s) to provide funding for all eligible low income working families.

There is an almost invisible component to all of this, as well. There are an estimated 2.7 million grandparents in the U.S. who have the responsibility of taking care of their grandchildren. Grandfamilies are families headed by grandparents and other relatives who share their homes with their grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and/or other related children. About 7.8 million children across the country live in households headed by grandparents or other relatives. Grandparents who take on full responsibility may lack legal custody preventing access to basic services, and others may experience financial problems or may have limited retirement resources.

Which offers a good transition to Elder Care: Statistics show that many people do not – and often can not - adequately plan for retirement, and there are unanticipated events that further complicate the problem. One of the biggest issues is the need to provide care for an older family member. According to an AARP Caregiving report, as many as 1 in 6 working-age women are providing unpaid elder care; often these caregivers stop working or work shorter hours in their paid jobs. This not only reduces their current income, but also they could have smaller 401(k) balances and lower Social Security income. 

Four million Americans will turn 65 annually, and by 2050, 27 million will require some form of support or long-term care. Anyone who has fallen into the “Sandwich Generation” - those who are caring for competing generations – children and/or grandchildren, a spouse, and/or a parent – feels the caregiving pinch.

This Catch 22 is particularly felt by women. During their working years, women tend to earn less than men, and when they retire, they're more likely to live in poverty. These are women who raised children and cared for sick and elderly family members, often taking what savings and income they had and spending it on things besides their own retirement security.

So, ask the candidates for office in the elections you will be deciding this November about their stand on caregiving issues – child care, elder care, etc. See if their economic priorities - and proposed solutions - match yours before you enter the voting booth!

Stay in touch with all the important economic security issues this fall as we #PowHerTheVote. Learn more & sign up at http://www.powherny.org/powher-the-vote/.

Workplace Practices - #PowHerTheVote Week #3

Workplace Practices - #PowHerTheVote Week #3

Here’s some news that isn’t really news: American women work outside the home.

If you want to explore this topic in depth, check out this page by the US Department of Labor. It explores the most recent annual averages for selected labor force characteristics of women. https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/latest_annual_data.htm

But in a nutshell, here are the numbers for American parents – both Moms and Dads – for full and part time work. (FYI, full time is 35 hours or more per week; part time is less than 35 hours.)

Employed parents by full- and part-time status, sex and age of youngest child, 2015 annual averages
Age of youngest child	Percent of total employed
	Mothers		Fathers
	Full-time	Part-time	Full-time	Part-time
under 3 years	72.8	27.2	94.4	5.6
3 to 5 years	74.6	25.4	95.7	4.3
6 to 17 years	77.7	22.3	95.8	4.2
under 18 years	76.0	24.0	95.4	4.6

The conditions under which families work have a lot to do with how (or if) they can manage the work-life balancing act that everyone is subject to. Employers and governments, who regulate employment conditions, have a big impact on how well that balance is achieved.

It is nearly impossible to get through your working life without having to take time off to tend to a personal illness, care for a dependent family member, or provide for the demands of pregnancy and childbirth. The “Father Knows Best” family model of the 1950s hasn’t existed for a very long time, outside of Hollywood. The “traditional family” with a male breadwinner is now the exception, with 7 in 10 mothers working.

Society has changed; the workplace needs to change to meet 21st Century reality. Good and smart companies are changing because they recognize that meeting the needs of their employees creates a better, more loyal and more highly-motivated workforce. But American families can’t wait for the workplace to change organically from the inside.

A handful of states, including New York, have pushed to the head of the class when it comes to guaranteeing Paid Family Leave benefits. In fact, when the new law is fully phased-in, New York employees will be eligible for 12 weeks of paid leave when caring for an infant, a family member with a serious health condition, or to relieve family pressures when someone is called to active military service.

For those employees who are covered, working NY families shouldn’t have to choose between caring for their loved ones and keeping their paycheck. The next phase of the #PaidFamilyLeave campaign will be to educate workers and employers about the law and create the regulations under which it will operate before full implementation in 2020.

But as is always the case, the new law leaves out too many part-time employees. Many workers – especially Hispanic, low-wage, part-time, immigrant, and service-industry working mothers across the income spectrum - aren’t guaranteed earned paid sick days under federal or NYS law, Filling in these legislative loopholes is still work needing to be done.

Another workplace fairness issue revolves about scheduling. Many part-time workers, especially for low-wages in the service industry, are subject to last-minute schedule changes that complicate child care or transportation arrangements. This combination of factors makes it much harder for mothers to provide for their children, create long-term budgets, save for retirement, and escape the cycle of poverty.

But advocates are pushing for reliable work schedules, both nationally and here in New York. The Workshift coalition of New York-based advocates has launched a national campaign to press large retailers, restaurant chains and other companies to end on-call and last-minute scheduling.

According to them, as many as three in five American workers - about 75 million people - are paid hourly. With a lot of recent job growth in mainly low-wage jobs, these often part-time jobs can be subject to last-minute scheduling practices. Workers in these new economy jobs might work 38 hours one week and 15 the next. That creates huge difficulties in caring for children and getting to work.

The recession of 2008 was particularly hard on these kinds of workers. Around 13 percent of hourly workers in 2001 and 2004 reported an "irregular schedule," for example. After 2009, that number increased to more than 15 percent. The proportion of workers who reported "varying hours" jumped to 29 percent after the recession, from 21 percent before. 

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has made going after lost and stolen wages, particularly for low-wage works, a priority. His office recovered nearly $5.7 million in owed pay and damages for more than 3,300 low-wage workers between Labor Day 2015 and 2016. Since the start of 2012, the AG’s office has recovered nearly $27 million for more than 20,000 workers victimized by wage theft, and levied $2.5 million in penalties against employers who cheat employees out of minimum wage and overtime pay.

And the need for sick leave is a public health crisis in this country. A survey by Wakefield Research found that 69% of working Americans don’t take sick days, even when they’re genuinely ill, because they feel they can’t afford to miss even a day of work. If, course, they even have paid sick days; many American workers don’t. According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, 40 percent of private-sector workers and 80% of low-wage workers do not receive any paid sick leave.

A majority of working adults say they go to work when they have a cold or the flu, and at least half of people who work in very public places, like hospitals and restaurants, putting the rest of us at risk. "It's one of the biggest food safety problems that there is, and we've known about it forever," says Kirk Smith, who oversees foodborne outbreak investigations with the Minnesota Department of Health.

The CDC has found that 1 in 5 food service workers has reported working while sick. Adults in low-paying jobs are more likely to go to work ill. The low-wage worker is under pressure from lost wages or loss of employment. 40% of workers--over 51 million--lack access to paid sick days in their current job. Nearly one quarter of adults in the US have been fired or threatened with job loss for taking time off to recover from illness or care for a sick loved one. This lack of uniform sick leave laws puts all of us at risk.

So, ask the candidates for office in the elections you will be deciding this November about their stand on paid family leave, workplace scheduling and paid sick leave. See if their economic priorities match yours before you enter the voting booth!

Stay in touch with all the important economic security issues this fall as we #PowHerTheVote. Learn more & sign up at http://www.powherny.org/powher-the-vote/.

“Progress” on the Wage Gap? – Not So Much

“Progress” on the Wage Gap? – Not So Much

Good news – Bad news.

The good news: The U.S. Census Bureau said the gender wage gap got smaller.

The bad news: It got smaller by the smallest possible amount – 1 cent.

A penny just does not make a difference to the millions of women who struggle every day to feed their families, pay the rent/mortgage, pay off student loans, or find – and afford – quality child care. When the Equal Pay Act was signed into law in 1963, women were paid 59 cents for every dollar men were paid. Today, that figure is 80 cents. At this rate, the gender pay gap won’t close for 136 years!

Women who hold full-time, year-round jobs are now typically paid just 80 cents for every dollar paid to men who hold full-time, year-round jobs. That amounts to $10,470 in lost income every year that could go toward basic necessities. To put that figure into perspective, that is a year and half of groceries worth of lost income.

And those are white women, who are the top of the unequal pay ladder. The pay gap is much worse for women of color. It amounts to 63 cents on the dollar paid to white men for African American women, 54 cents for Latinas, and 85 cents Asian women. Those lost dollars mean months and months of working for free, just to equal the pay scale for white men in one year.

On September 15, Native American Women’s Equal Pay Day, the wages of American Indian and Alaska Native women “catch up” to the money white men took home in 2014 — taking an extra nine months, plus the whole of the previous year.

Even the youngest women – those who often have the best education and no dependants – suffer a gender wage gap. The typical “Millennial” woman (up to age 24) earns $ .91 on the man’s dollar. And that pay gap only goes up over time and as she has children.

Mothers typically are paid only 73 cents for every dollar fathers are paid — a pay gap larger than the 20-cent gap between women and men overall. And there is a Motherhood Penalty: research shows that employers are less likely to hire mothers compared with child-free women, and when employers do make an offer to a mother, they offer her a lower salary than they do other women.

Men’s wages often rise with children, yet the reverse is true for the 40 percent of households with children that include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family.

There are policy solutions that could make a big difference to help end wage discrimination and adopting family friendly workplace policies, but most of these proposals are stuck in our gridlocked Congress.

The Paycheck Fairness Act is a comprehensive bill that strengthens the Equal Pay Act by taking meaningful steps to create incentives for employers to follow the law, empower women to negotiate for equal pay, and strengthen federal outreach and enforcement efforts. The Paycheck Fairness Act is would help ensure that all working women get equal pay for equal work.

The FAMILY Act (Family And Medical Insurance Leave Act) would help provide the support working families need to manage the demands of job and family, something that businesses and our economy need to thrive. Nationally, just 13 percent of the workforce have paid family leave through their employers, and less than 40 percent have personal medical leave through an employer-provided disability program.

The Healthy Families Act would help families balance meeting the needs of sick or injured family members and keeping their job. Without paid sick leave, at least 43 million private sector workers – 39 percent of the workforce – must make this decision every time illness strikes because they don’t have access to paid sick days.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would help prevent employers from forcing pregnant women out of the workplace and help ensure that employers provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant women who want to continue working. Pregnant workers are too often lose their jobs or are denied reasonable accommodations that would enable them to continue working and supporting their families.

Passing all of these federal proposals would have a direct and positive effect on the lives of women and their families. (Remember, if Congress won’t act, we need to change Congress.)

Here in New York State, we’ve begun to address these issues, but adopting family-friendly policies on a state-by-state or a city-by-city basis leaves out too many people. In means your economic security is product of your zip code, not your hard work.

Most American families can’t afford to wait until 2152 for the wage gap to close and our country to join the ranks of every other first world nation that recognizes that we all have a stake in the economic prosperity and security of every person and every family.

Ask the candidates for office in the elections you will be deciding this November about their stand on equal pay, on paycheck fairness, on paid family leave, and on other economic security issues before you go into the voting booth. Put your economic interests first!

Stay in touch with all the important issues this fall as we #PowHerTheVote. Learn more & sign up at http://www.powherny.org/powher-the-vote/.

A Look at Labor on Labor Day

A Look at Labor on Labor Day

         

With Labor Day upon us, it would be wonderful to report full employment in high-paying jobs with good benefits for all. That is not the case, however. In fact, 81 percent of US households saw “flat” or “falling” incomes over the past 10 years. One headline in early June read, “Worst Jobs Report In Nearly 6 Years – 102 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have Jobs.”

Too many jobs are part-time for low-wages, especially for women. And even given the efforts to raise the wage in cities and states around the nation, the progress is spotty, at best.

The reality is that with the federal minimum wage is just $7.25 per hour, even with a 40-hour work weeks (which is not a given), those full-time earnings of $14,500 a year will leave a family of three thousands of dollars below the federal poverty line.

And while 29 states and the District of Columbia currently have minimum wages above the federal $7.25 an hour, almost everywhere the minimum wage leaves a full-time worker with two children near or below the poverty level. Check out this table: Women and the Minimum Wage, State by State.

These low minimum wages hit women and their families especially hard. Women represent nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers across the country, and more than three-quarters of minimum wage workers in some states. Of all single-parent families in the U.S., single mothers make up the majority. And 25% of American children have a parent earning minimum wage.

Women paid the minimum wage across the country are struggling to put food on the table, pay the rent, find childcare, and meet day-to-day expenses. Here in New York, nearly one-half of low-income working moms in New York City have less than $500 to fall back on in an emergency.

And the toll is not just because of gender. Over 50% of married African American mothers bring in one-half or more of their families' income, yet are paid far less than white women for their work. Black women are paid just 64¢ for every dollar paid to a white man. The pay gap is ever higher for Native American women who are typically paid 59¢ for every $1 paid to a white man.

An issue that cuts across almost every economic line is the lack of high quality, affordable child care. Only a fraction of the 430,000+ single and working moms with children under 18 in New York State can afford full time childcare. And in many families, women are the primary breadwinners and caregivers. Working is not a luxury but much of it is often unpaid and that which is paid is almost always underpaid.

Moms can’t work if childcare doesn’t work for them. Many single, working moms face poverty because childcare needs make finding, keeping and advancing their employment difficult. Women holding a low-wage job may also be subject to abusive scheduling practices that are all too common with split shifts, uneven hours and last minute calls either cancelling or requiring emergency shift changes.

And childcare workers experience poverty themselves since we don’t value the work they do when it comes to paying them. We know that it takes a skilled and effective workforce to promote children’s learning and development, yet here in the Unites States, we pay most early childhood educators poverty-level low wages. Bargain hunting ought not to start in day cares and early education centers.

Falling into joblessness and poverty is not hard to do. At some point in their lives, four out of 5 U.S. adults will struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, according to a recent report.

This likelihood of this struggle goes up over times, as it does for low education workers or minorities. Researchers Mark Rank and Thomas Hirschl looked at Institute for Social Research data from 2001 that indicated that at age 25, around 6 percent of people had experienced poverty, but by age 75, 51 percent had experienced at least one year of poverty. Since the economic downturn in 2008, those numbers have only gotten worse.

One of the quickest ways to fall into poverty is to have a child. It turns out that 25% of all poverty spells in the U.S. begin with the birth of a new child. One in four employed mothers returns to work within two weeks of her own Labor Day! Only 11% of American workers have access to paid leave through their employers.

The National Partnership recently released the fourth edition of their Expecting Better report — a state-by-state analysis of laws and regulations governing paid leave, paid sick days, protections for pregnant workers and other workplace rights for expecting and new parents in the United States. Although some states are making progress, many are failing to provide needed supports.

And while New York State makes the grade with an A-, there is still room for improvement! Not every county offers enough of the kinds of services families need to make it in the 21^st Century economy. For example, two recent studies found that higher mandated hourly wages lead to healthier babies at birth. And yet, here in the US, the rate of women dying in childbirth is going up while maternal death rates have fallen sharply since 1990 in much of the rest of the world.

There are policy responses to all these issues that have a proven, demonstrable positive impact which are simply not being tried here in America in enough places to make a difference. These are the kinds of issues we need to be asking candidates for office at every level to discuss prior to heading into the voting booth in November. Same old, same old just isn’t producing better results.