Discounted Labour? Disaggregating Care Work in Comparative Perspective

This article contrasts the earnings of high and low status care workers in Canada, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan using the micro data files of the Luxembourg Income Study. By disaggregating preexisting definitions of care work, I identify occupations with higher and lower degrees of “social closure” and reveal the concomitant care penalty and care bonus cross-nationally. In addition, I empirically measure the extent of similarities (and differences) between and within care economies in “liberal” and “productivist developmental” welfare regimes and offer support for the argument that conditions of globalization have fostered substantial convergence within the international care market.