ABSTRACT
This study embeds paid and unpaid care work in a structuralist macroeconomic model.
Care work is formally modeled as a gendered input into the market production process
via its impact on the current and future labor force, with altruistic motivations
determining both how much support people give one another and the economic
effectiveness of that support.
This study uses the model to distinguish between two types
of economies – a “selfish” versus an “altruistic” economy – and seeks to understand how
different macroeconomic conditions and events play out in the two cases. Whether and
how women and men share the financial and time costs of care condition the results of
the comparison, with more equal sharing of care responsibilities making the “altruistic”
case more likely.