Overview

The Care at work report offers a global overview of national laws, policies and practices on care, including maternity, paternity, parental, child and long-term care. It highlights how some workers fall outside the scope of these legal protections. These include the self-employed, workers in the informal economy, migrants, and adoptive and LGBTQI+ parents. It also looks at the case for – and potential impact of – greater investment in care. The need for long-term care services for older persons and those with disabilities has been rising steeply because of increased life expectancy and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic . However, the study finds that access to services such as residential care, community day services and in-home care, remains inaccessible to the great majority of those who need them world-wide, although “long-term care services are essential to ensure the right to healthy ageing in dignity”. The report finds “a strong investment case” for creating a transformative package of care policies, based on universal access, that would create a breakthrough pathway for building a better and more gender equal world of work. Investment in gender equal leave, universal childcare and long-term care services could generate up to 299 million jobs by 2035, it says. Closing these policy gaps would require an annual investment of US$5.4 trillion (equivalent to 4.2 per cent of total annual GDP) by 2035, some of which could be offset by an increase in tax revenue from the additional earnings and employment.