What Care Economy?

It's just talk because it's not real.

A student in a Masters program reached out to me last week to schedule an interview. She’s completing her capstone project on designing programs and services for family caregivers. I happily scheduled time to meet with her.

During our interview, she asked: “How do you define the care economy?”

I love that question for a few reasons:

1. It’s a catch phrase for a reality that doesn’t exist. We do not take care into factor in our economy.

2. I’ve been writing and presenting about the impact of caregiving experiences on our communities and economies since 2018.

I spoke at the Third Annual National Caregiving Conference I hosted in 2018 and shared how that looks:

A virtual conference viewer saw my drawing and emailed me a design, which inspired me to spend five minutes in Canva creating a better visual which I now use when I talk about the future of caregiving.

The polished version is below:

When caregiving begins, our caree drops out of the community. Then, as the help we provide intensifies, we drop out, too. That means we no longer spend money in our communities like we once did.

We fall out of our communities and then our dollars follow.

We have no programs, services or plans in place to bring us back into the community.

I created a calculator of the price our communities pay when both carees and family caregivers drop out of our communities. In a community of 100,000 residents, perhaps 15,000 navigate a caregiving situation. If each family caregiver once spent just $20 per week visiting local restaurants and shops — and that spending stops —the monthly cost to the community is $1,200,000. You can use our calculator to estimate the cost to your own community.

That’s why we don’t have a care economy. We have an economy. We have a caregiving experience. They could work together to support each other. Over the next several weeks, I’ll consider how we could do that and create a flourishing care economy. I’ll take a deeper dive into transportation, housing, mental well-being, workplaces, quality of life and economic and community flourishing.

Resources

• Take our short survey: How does your caregiving experience impact your spending?

---

---