The cost of caring

Caring work involves providing a face-to-face service to recipients in jobs such as child care, teaching, therapy, and nursing. Such jobs offer low pa y relative to their requirements for education and skill. What explains the penalty for doing caring work? Because caring labor is associated with wom en, cultural sexism militates against recognizing the value of the work. Al so, the intrinsic reward people receive from helping others may allow emplo yers to fill the jobs for lower pay. Caring labor creates public goods-wide spread benefits that accrue even to those who pay nothing. For example, if children learn skills and discipline from teachers, the children's future e mployers benefit, with no market mechanism to make the pay given to care wo rkers reflect these benefits. Even when the public or not-for-profit sector s do step in to hire people to provide such services for those too poor to pay, the pay is limited by how much decision makers really care about the p oor. Finally, the fact that people feel queasy about putting a price on som ething as sacred as care limits the pay offered-as paradoxical as it is to pay less for something when it is seen as infinitely valuable.