Human Rights & Social Sustainability
Care economy
The paid and unpaid labour of caring for people — childcare, eldercare, health and domestic work — recognised by the ILO as a distinct, under-valued pillar of economies.
Expert review openNo editor-accepted expert review yetDefinition
The sector of economic activity — paid and unpaid, formal and informal — comprising direct care (nursing, childcare, eldercare, disability support) and indirect care (cooking, cleaning, fetching water and fuel) that sustains people's wellbeing. Performed disproportionately by women, it spans public services, markets, the non-profit sector and households.
References
Definition (paid/unpaid, direct/indirect); 381M care workers; 748M out of labour force; sector wage gaps.
16.4bn hours unpaid care daily; ~9% of GDP / US$11tn valuation; ILO country GDP range.
Overview
What it means
The ILO frames care work as the work that makes all other work possible — yet its scale is mostly invisible in GDP. Its landmark estimates: 381 million paid care workers globally (two-thirds women), 748 million people outside the labour force because of care responsibilities (over 90% of them women), and unpaid care work equivalent to 16.
4 billion hours per day — roughly 9% of global GDP, or about US$11 trillion at prevailing minimum wages. ILO country studies put unpaid care at 10–39% of GDP. Investment in care services is presented as a triple dividend: quality care, gender-equal employment, and higher labour-force participation.
How it is used
The concept drives ILO's 5R framework (recognise, reduce, redistribute unpaid care; reward, represent care workers), informs care-policy investment cases (childcare as infrastructure), and enters ESG social metrics on workforce wellbeing and gender equity.
Why it matters
Demographic ageing and gender-equality goals make the care economy one of the fastest-growing and most structurally undervalued parts of the world economy — central to any serious account of social sustainability.
Review
Public comments appear only after editor acceptance. Draft comments stay in the review queue.
Reviewers choose the definition or an overview paragraph, leave a comment or replacement, and attach evidence or a source link.
Editors compare reviewer cards side by side. AI may help find agreement, conflicts, unsupported claims and possible source issues.
Only an editor-accepted synthesis changes the public page. Reviewer identities are shown only with consent and verification.
Submitted reviews stay private until accepted.
Loading verified endorsements… Endorsements are not votes and never determine publication.
Endorse this definition
Endorse the exact version shown here. This is not a vote, and publication remains an editorial decision.
Review board
Comment on a specific line. Each reviewer stays separate until an editor accepts a merged draft.
Each person comments on the definition or overview in their own draft card, with role, evidence and suggested wording kept together.
AI can compare comments against the current text, flag conflicting claims, surface missing evidence and identify where reviewers agree.
An editor merges compatible suggestions into a draft change, checks sources, records disagreements and decides what can be published.