WEBVTT - Care Work in the United States Has Been Broken for Years 0:00:10.160 --> 0:00:14.000 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:16.320 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.840 Tracy, you know, we've spent the last I guess it's 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:22.080 like three years now, maybe even a little. Actually it's 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:23.040 been longer than three. 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:25.520 Years now, feels like a long time talking. 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:29.480 About many aspects of the sort of physical manufactured economy 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:31.680 that broke or are broken in some way. 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:35.159 Yeah, And I think it's because, I mean, obviously, the 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:38.479 pandemic exposed a lot of these fault lines with global 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:43.360 supply chains for physical goods, primarily consumer goods, things like 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.280 furniture and food and stuff like that. But on the 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:51.040 other hand, there was also a lot of disruption to services, 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:54.280 and we haven't really spoken as much about that, right. 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.560 And the other thing that's really striking with services, So 0:00:57.640 --> 0:00:59.600 actually right now we're in this period where like, for 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.240 the fact, there's a lot of focus on services inflation 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:04.680 and when is that going to come down, et cetera. 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.520 The other thing with a lot of services, particularly like 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.959 very crucial services, is that to the extent that we 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:15.080 talk about certain industries being broken or market failures, which 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:17.080 I think was like a sort of like recurrent theme 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:20.800 of our work. Many of the was sort of broken, 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.959 it seems in the services space, it just existed long before. 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:29.080 Like these these problems were actually very evident even prior. 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:30.000 To COVID no totally. 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:31.720 There was actually a chart I was looking at just 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.000 last week that showed the long term inflation trends in 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.360 the US broken into sort of components, and if you 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:42.679 look at it, the highest price increases are all in services, 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:46.759 so things like healthcare, childcare, while all the consumer goods, 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:49.240 the durable stuff, has been going down. So it's much 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:53.000 cheaper to buy a big screen TV than previously, but 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.760 it's much more expensive to have a kid and send 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:58.400 them to college and things like that. 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:00.120 Right, and so these are like these sort of like 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:00.960 deeper things. 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:03.080 And so we're thinking about, like, okay, what are the bottlenecks, 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:06.000 what are the you know, the so called market failures, 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:07.840 et cetera that cause this, And we look at it 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.000 in the manufactured world, but buy and large you know, 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.200 TVs and refrigerators and air conditioning and cars, and they 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.360 get better and better, it seems like over time, and 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:18.960 buy and large they do get cheaper, even with the 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:22.400 recent disruptions. But why are the parts of this economy 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:25.040 that I think everyone considers to be crucial and sort 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:29.160 of things related to childcare, care work, elder care, which 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:31.760 is going to become a bigger and bigger crisis or 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:34.760 issue for the economy, is the baby boomer generation. Ages. 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.200 These have been broken for people for a long time, 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:40.680 and there's no like end insight, there's no like, oh, 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.800 it's going to finally normalize because the pre COVID trend 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:44.359 was so bad. 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.320 Yeah, are we pivoting from goods to services? Is that 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:47.880 what's happening? 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.240 I think we are doing a little pivot. All right, well, 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:52.920 let us uh but yeah, we need to talk about 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:54.919 this more. And so I'm very excited about our guest today. 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:57.239 We're going to be speaking with Nancy Fulbrace. She is 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:00.880 a Professor Emerit of Economics at UMAs Amhers and director 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.560 of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:07.239 Political Economy Research Institute. Professor Fulbray, thank you so much 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:08.480 for coming on odd lots. 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:10.960 Thank you. I'm really looking forward to it. 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:15.520 So let's just start with like the premise of this conversation, 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.000 because I know we discussed it as this is a 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:23.880 care work and that encompasses multiple things. It feels like 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.919 an area that's been broken into some sense for long 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.200 before the pandemic. But I'm curious, like a do you 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:32.560 accept that premise that broken is a good way to 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:35.080 think about it, And how would you characterize the sort 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.680 of you know, is what have we seen for years 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:40.800 in this sector that feels wrong to people? 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.880 You know, I kind of agree with the broken word, 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:49.720 but I think that analyzing it completely in terms of markets, 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.640 even in terms of market failure, is a little bit misleading, 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.680 because what's really interesting about care provision is it involves 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:58.520 a lot of paid work, but also a lot of 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.320 unpaid work, and also a lot of government provision. And 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:07.320 it's the way that all of those sources of provisioning interact. 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:14.000 I think that give it some very particular characteristics and 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.960 in addition to the kind of characteristics of services in 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:18.960 general that make it different from manufacturing. 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:21.840 Well, on that note, maybe talk to us about the 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:25.279 landscape of childcare in the US and what it looks 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.640 like now, because my impression is, you know, there is 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:32.479 some government support, some families get subsidies, but for the 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.640 most part, you're talking about a sort of network of 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:42.760 primarily very small, independent childcare centers and or people who 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:46.440 are doing this work, you know, for free for their families. 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:48.919 If you have a family member who's maybe looking after 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:51.360 your kid or a friend's kid or whatever, So talk 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:54.760 to us about what it looks like currently well. 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:57.680 Rang out, it's pretty clear that people are having a 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.440 hard time finding the childcare that they need outside of 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:05.839 the home, and also that it's become increasingly expensive to 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:09.760 do it. And it's clearly making life difficult for a 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:13.720 lot of families and having some adverse effects on children 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.760 as well. I think it's particularly consequential for women, who 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:21.000 are often more constrained by childcare responsibilities than men are. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:22.919 You know, part of this has to do with just 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:26.400 the nature of services that are different than it's different 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.800 than a producing a good, a physical good. It's long 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:35.480 been noted that services are not as susceptible to technical change. 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:37.560 The very nature of care means you've got to have 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:41.159 some face to face, hands on interaction. Maybe technology is 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.039 going to improve the quality or change the nature of it, 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:49.600 but it's basically a pretty labor intensive and emotionally intensive 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:56.080 kind of provision. It's one that people really value, that's 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.320 really important in terms of their quality of life and 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:03.640 child outcome. But it's not easy to put it together 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.520 with a world in which most families have to need 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:10.960 to income earners, so they need some help with childcare 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:14.799 outside the home. Another thing I think it's worth mentioning 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.520 is that it used to be that parents could rely 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:21.479 on a pretty large network of neighbors and ken to 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:24.280 help them out with childcare. That's much less true than 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:28.000 it used to be. College educated workers in particular are 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:30.480 pretty unlikely now to live in the same area as 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:34.080 their parents. A lot of job requirements mean that people 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:38.040 have to be willing to move, so you know, there's 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:42.200 just less available ken nearby compared to what there used 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:46.080 to be, especially in large cities. And you know the 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.600 fact that more women are working means that more sort 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:52.880 of potential grandmothers are also working as well, so that's 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.880 another constriction. And the kind of supply of informal care, 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:01.240 so that's one of the things that's driving the problem. 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:05.080 So one of the things that's really striking, and you mentioned, 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:07.800 you know, particularly say in New York City, there's so 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:11.440 many people face childcare stress. People are tearing their hairs 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:14.840 out trying to find someone to watch their baby or 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:17.800 a young child and we see these charts of the 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.560 price is going crazy and the numbers that people have 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:24.040 to pay are pretty astronomical. And yet my impression is 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.280 that the actual wages of the people who work in 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.400 daycare centers or childcare centers are low, and so there 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:34.760 is seems to be you know, I know, you're sort 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.640 of the idea of a market failure is it. Maybe 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.760 perhaps not the best way of framing it, but this 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:43.560 does feel very intuitively like how people think of a 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.720 market failure. Why are the costs for the end consumer 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.400 surging at the same time the workers do not seem 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:52.600 to be reaping much of the benefit from it in 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:54.520 terms of rapid wage games. 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:58.400 You know, one of the most basic market failures that 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:02.480 often gets left out the discussion of market failure is 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.040 that people can't participate in a market unless they have 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:10.000 enough money. So what's happened with childcare is as inequality 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:13.600 has increased, the demand for childcare has gone up, and 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.080 the price of it has gone up. And what's happened 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:18.080 is a lot of low income families have been just 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:21.400 priced out of the market, so they're unable to buy it. 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.480 So it's kind of like the housing market, which tilted 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.400 very much towards high end housing and left US with 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:32.120 a huge growing population of homeless people that can't afford 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:34.840 housing because low income housing is so hard to find. 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:40.560 So I think that's one of the factors that's driving 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.400 the problem. But another one in New York City in particular, 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:45.640 is that for a long time, the kind of safety 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.280 valve was low age immigrants who were willing to work 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:54.640 under the table as nannies or as occasional babysitters or childcare. 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.160 We don't have very good statistics on what's happened to 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.280 that supply, but it's pretty clear that the combination of 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:03.920 the pandemic and immigration policy and cultural change in the 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.040 US has kind of reduced that that informal supply that 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.120 was once kind of helping lubricate the market. But you know, 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.559 another factor is that is that the way the labor 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.040 market's supposed to work is that when there's a shortage 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:20.680 of labor, wages go up very rapidly. But it's really 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:23.920 hard to raise wages in the childcare industry for a 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:27.320 couple of reasons. One is a lot of it at 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:31.160 the lower end relies on government subsidies and government you know, 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.680 regulated rates and also on funding, and so if the 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:42.640 funding stream doesn't increase, those subsidized centers can't pay higher wages. Right. 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:48.080 So that's one kind of sticky point in the whole 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:52.000 you know, in the whole process. But then another one 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:55.880 is the example that I was you know, the point 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:57.600 that I was making is that if you have enough 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:01.880 money and there's a lot of scarcity, you can you 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.400 can bid up the prices for kind of individual providers 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:09.880 like nannies, right without really necessarily going through the daycare 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:14.920 center care system. So it's not you know, I guess 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:16.800 maybe a way to think about it is it's not 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:20.600 a homogeneous product. You know, it's coming from all these 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:25.440 different sources. And yeah, the market failure that you're referring 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:27.520 to is kind of a function of a more complex 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:32.800 institutional failure. I guess that's that's aggravating things. 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:53.160 So I definitely want to talk about inequality, inflation or 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:55.640 this idea that you have, you know, more price in 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:59.000 elastic consumers who might be driving up prices for other people. 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.760 But just before we do in terms of this idea 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:05.640 of childcare is expensive and you might have someone who's 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.480 paying two or three thousand dollars a month in New York. 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:09.600 City or elsewhere. 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:14.320 Where is that money going to If it's not going 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:18.280 to the wages of the workers. And if you know, 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:20.760 we were doing some prep on this before the episode, 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:23.880 if profit margins for a lot of these childcare centers 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:26.040 are relatively low, where does all that money go? 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:27.240 Yeah? 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:30.000 Well, yeah, it's always a good idea to follow the money, 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:34.160 isn't it. But I guess one of the points I'm 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.280 trying to make is that, you know, buying talker services 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:41.880 on the informal market, like paying a nanny, probably those 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:44.680 rates are going up a lot. Those aren't really part 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:48.560 of the establishment you know, Bureer of Labor Statistics, establishment survey. 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:52.040 So what we're seeing with kind of low and stagnant 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:56.559 wages is childcare centers, right, including some that are subsidized 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:01.560 through state and local funding. And you know, and yet 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:04.840 there's this, you know, there's this kind of boutique market 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.920 where people are really really paying super high prices and 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:11.880 that's not necessarily reflected in the aggregate statistics. 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:16.080 So so I mean, and you're sort of just putting 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:18.760 together what you're saying. Part of the problem is to 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.240 even talk about this as a market is there's so 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.439 many different markets. So you have some people who work 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:28.079 as nanni's and probably getting paid very well. You have 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.520 a lot of people who are not getting paid any 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.680 nominal wage because they're taking care of their child or 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.600 they're taking care of their grandchild or something in the family. 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.920 And then you have daycare or childcare workers. And so 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:44.160 to even talk about this as like a market or 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.520 to say, well, we know that the average wage of 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.480 a childcare worker it's x is a flaw right from 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.800 the beginning, because there are just so many different types 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:55.439 of ways with which childcare is provisioned. 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:58.040 Yeah, I think that's a really good summary. 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:00.000 Thank you. 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:03.360 I want to go back to the inequality aspect because 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.560 I think I find that really interesting. And do we 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:10.679 have any sense of like the distribution or the distribution 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:15.800 like how many workers are moving from say working might 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.800 have been working at a daycare or childcare center and 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.840 now working getting paid much more as a very rich 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:26.000 families nanny. Like what does the distribution there and that 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:28.920 flow of workers look like, And how much does the 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:31.640 sort of extreme wealth of some people in the ability 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:34.719 to hire a nanny or obviously, in many cases or 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:38.400 at least some cases, multiple nannies, Like, how much does that, 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:41.440 in your view, sort of affecting the industry overall. 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:45.040 Well, first of all, it's a really interesting empirical question. 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:47.960 To answer it, you need, basically, you need some administrative 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.680 data that follows people longitudinally, and there's often a lag 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:55.040 in our access to that kind of longitudinal data. I 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:57.760 recently worked on a study of human service workers in 0:13:57.800 --> 0:13:59.719 the city of Seattle, and we were able to get 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:03.680 some administrative data showing that when people left human service jobs, 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.520 including childcare, for another job, they got a really big 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:12.160 pay increase. But that was you know, pre pandemic and 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:15.360 not really very up to date. But you know, another 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.400 way to think about it is the issue is that 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.640 there's some selection bias. That is, like, when you see 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.160 the what's happening to prices and wages, there's a lot 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:28.800 you're you know, you're not seeing the people that cannot 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:32.520 afford to buy childcare anymore, right, So some people are 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:34.880 paying a whole lot more for childcare, but some people 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:38.440 can't buy it at all. So what you're seeing is, yes, 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:41.560 the price is going up because poor people can no 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:44.400 longer afford to buy it. So that's why I think 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.360 the analogy to housing is kind of is kind of helpful. 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:51.600 You can actually make you know, affluent families are willing 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:53.640 and able to pay a lot a lot of money 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:58.520 for childcare and for other care services, right, But families 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.600 at the bottom are not earning a wage that's sufficiently 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:05.440 high to hire somebody to help them with that work 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:08.280 and still be able to pay their other bills. So 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:12.200 it's really kind of about a selection bias in the 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.320 in the in the market. That's why I think the 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:17.960 housing analogy, you know, kind of works. I mean, how 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:20.600 could we how can we have a shortage of housing 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.920 in a country where we have actually pretty pretty successful 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:28.120 and efficient housing industry, but it's building homes for the 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:31.000 affluent because the profit mersions hi are there? 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:33.680 Right, And both of these things, I mean, housing and 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:37.720 childcare would be considered essential services or things to have 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:41.400 in order to live a full, normal economic life. 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:43.800 And human life. But talk to us a little bit 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:45.920 about how we got here. 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:50.440 What are the choices that the US specifically made in 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:55.640 order to create a sort of private childcare industry or 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:58.120 I guess informal economy network. 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:01.880 You know, I don't think there were explicit choices. I 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:04.800 think it's kind of the chaotic result of a process 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:10.040 of kind of collective bickering and negotiation over who should 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.160 pay the cost of rearing the next generation. That's why 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:15.720 I think it's really important to think about the big picture, 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:21.320 like who should pay those costs. And the economics profession, 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:25.320 like the social sciences in general, has kind of treated 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:27.760 child rearing as though it's sort of a you know, 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:30.960 a luxury good. It's a consumption good. You know, having 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:33.760 a child is like having a pet. It's your pet. 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:37.760 You should take care of it. It's your business. And 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:42.800 now we're beginning to realize that that's a terrible metaphor 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.400 because raising children is actually a really important component of 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:51.200 economic sustainability, the future labor force, the people who are 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:53.000 going to pay the taxes that are going to support 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:56.040 us in our old age. So I think it's sort 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.120 of coming, you know, I think this is becoming. There's 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:01.720 more realization about this, looking at kind of the future 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:04.679 of medicare and social security, the implications of a below 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:09.240 replacement fertility rate. It's like, oh, gee, you know, it's 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:12.520 going to be a problem if we don't have a 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:17.400 working age population that's big enough to help us meet 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:18.760 our names as we grow older. 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:25.560 Can you talk through Suppose a family that cannot afford childcare, 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.920 either a private NANU or even a sort of a 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:31.840 more public option by public, I mean, or a sort 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:35.240 of commercially available option at like a childcare or daycare center. 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:39.280 What happens? I assume the burden of that in many families, 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:43.520 you know, overwhelmingly falls on the mother. But what is 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:47.679 the sort of the cost of that in terms of Okay, 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:50.520 you have one mother who is able to find childcare, 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:53.040 another mother who can't find it or can't afford it 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:55.359 in terms of what is the cost to them in 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.440 terms of their life, in terms of earnings and so 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:01.200 forth from that unequal distribution of available childcare. 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.919 Well, I mean, first, one big manifestation of it is 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.200 resorting to part time or temporary work, you know, cycling 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:11.760 in and out of the labor force. Like maybe you 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.960 have an informal childcare arrangement COB together with a working schedule, 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.920 and then your child gets sick. What do you do? 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.399 You figure out a way? You know, you basically have 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:23.280 to quit your job. You might hope that you get 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:26.520 unemployment insurance. Then you have to kind of rely on 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:28.400 friends and family, and then you go out and try 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.440 and find another job where you can actually combine that 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:34.720 with responsibilities for looking after your kids, or you look 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:39.399 for neighbors or can you're willing to trade or exchange 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.360 services for that. That's kind of a stressful and time 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:46.720 consuming process, and you know, it has pretty significant consequences 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:50.240 for lifetime earnings because anybody in the labor market who 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:52.879 doesn't have a sort of consistent record of full time 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.520 job tenure, it gets stuck at the bottom and it's 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.800 not a real candidate for moving up the patiental ladder. 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:03.800 So I think it really contributes a lot to the 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:08.720 you know, kind of a serious lack of income mobility 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:13.439 for mothers. I mean, the paradox is that there's a 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.720 lot of evidence that high earning mothers actually pay a 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:21.160 bigger quote unquote cost for motherhood because when they take 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:25.880 time out from their careers, the penalty is very high 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.760 because their earnings are very high, so they're taking a 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.359 bigger hit in terms of earnings. But almost all of 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.920 those women are also married to high earners and that 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:40.119 provides a kind of buffer or safety net that reduces 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:43.719 the impact of the motherhood penalty. Whereas women who are 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:46.639 stuck in very part time kind of secondary labor market 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:52.840 jobs are basically stuck there for life without much opportunity 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.720 to you know, once their kids grow up and leave home, 0:19:57.000 --> 0:19:58.919 they could look for a better job, but they have 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.600 no employment. You know, their employment history and their employment 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.199 record kind of condemns them to it. Pretty low trajectory. 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:07.919 So just on this note, you know, Joe and I 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:11.399 started the conversation talking about the supply chain disruptions that 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:14.040 we saw during the pandemic, and of course the pandemic 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:17.880 was also extremely disruptive for the childcare industry and for 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:22.080 anyone who had you know, younger children and suddenly had 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:24.960 to figure out what to do with them while they 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:26.600 were perhaps working from home and. 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:28.760 Things like that. Talk to us about what. 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:33.520 The pandemic showed about this sort of economic trajectory, because 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:37.359 I remember, there's been a lot of high profile research saying, 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:40.760 for instance, that the gender wage gap went up during 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:42.800 the pandemic because a lot of women had to reduce 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:45.359 their hours in order to look after their children and 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:46.000 things like that. 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:50.680 Yeah, what we know from Timyus research is that women 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:55.800 increased their hours of childcare and house work significantly. I 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:59.600 mean men did too, partly because of working of you know, 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:02.720 being home work right, but women's the increase in women's 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:07.200 workload was clearly bigger than that of men. I think 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:11.120 there's another finding from time use research. You know, most 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.280 of most time use research is based on the American 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:18.879 Time Youse Survey, which is a really interesting representative sample 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:22.159 of the US population that just asks people, you know, 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:24.560 what did you do when you woke up? What did 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:26.119 you do after that? What did you know? What did 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.360 you do then? What did you do? So it gives 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:31.439 us a real sense of how much unpaid work was 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:35.439 being performed, both before and after the pandemic. And the 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.560 survey asked the question a bunch of questions about active childcare, 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:43.239 like how much time did you spend? Well, it's not 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:46.040 asking these questions directly, but it's taking the responses that 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:48.119 people give to the survey and then it's coding them 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:52.080 into categories like here's the time that people respond reported 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:55.639 feeding their children, Here's the time that people reported on 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:59.919 average transporting their children. Here's the time that parents were 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:04.720 on average reading aloud to their children. And those active 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:09.680 childcare responsibilities are pretty they're pretty binding, but they're not 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:12.560 really great that they're not really that high in terms 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:17.199 of hours average hours per day. What's really much greater, 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:21.640 for a much greater temporal demand for parents of young 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:26.760 children is what's called supervisory time or in your care time, 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:31.400 the fact that somebody has to be home and available 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:35.760 or on call with children. And so this difference really 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:42.120 explains a lot. For instance, when parents utilize paid childcare services, 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:46.520 they're not really reducing their active childcare that much. They're 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:48.840 coming home from work and they're engaging with their kids, 0:22:48.880 --> 0:22:51.080 they're getting their kids ready to go to school in 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:53.439 the morning. There's still a lot of active care. What 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:57.719 childcare really reduces out of home childcare really does for 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:03.520