In this lesson, we address the question, how valued is care. Here we will address two issues, why care workers are underpaid and other ways care workers are devalued. To begin to address this issue, I would like to show the following clip. The reason this clip is funny is precisely because teachers today are underpaid, especially relative to professional athletes. Did you know how much the average kindergarten teacher was paid in 2020? Around $60,000. Do you know how much a good kindergarten teacher is really worth? Around $320,000 according to a study by Harvard economist Raj Chetty, back in 2010. Professor Chetty came up with this figure based on teacher's impact on their students adult outcomes. He found that on average, individuals will make $100 more a year at age 27. For every percentile they moved up the test score distribution while in kindergarten and so a student who moved up 10 percentile points, for example, from the 50th to the 60th percentile would make on average $100 more a year at 27, than a student who stayed at the 50th percentile throughout their test in kindergarten. Moreover, Chetty suggests that these effects grow over time, such that a 10 percentile increase in test scores in kindergarten increases a student's lifetime earnings by $320,000. Chetty attributes these findings to the fact that students learn the essential skills of patients, discipline, manners, and perseverance from good kindergarten teachers. Susan Reverby famously wrote that "The chief dilemma facing teachers, nurses, social workers, and other care professions is being ordered to care in a society that refuses to value caring." In fact, there's a lot of evidence to support that claim. For example, studies by Paula England and others have consistently shown that even after taking into account a variety of factors known to influence how much money people earn in different occupations, such as the number of hours on the job, educational requirements, skill demands, whether an occupation is highly unionized and whether an occupation offers considerable autonomy. Individuals whose work involves caring for others will on average be paid less. Why do you suppose that is? Well, there are several possible reasons why individuals in the helping professions suffer a so-called wage penalty. Some of which seem more plausible than others. One possible reason is the existence of sexist cultural norms. That is, carrying labor may be paid less because people associate caring skills and activities with women and their motherly role, which are devalued in society at large. Conversely, employers are more apt to recognize the contribution of jobs done by men or jobs involving skills that are often labeled as masculine in nature, such as managerial or scientific positions. Another possible explanation has to do with what economists call compensating differentials. According to this idea, jobs that are more intrinsically satisfying are paid less because they offer certain kinds of amenities that make up for a low salary. Hence, people who entered the helping professions may be more willing to accept a smaller paycheck because that type of work offers them opportunities to engage in something they also value, interacting with people on a personal level. But does the satisfaction of doing certain kind of work really explained why the helping professions pay less. We know, for instance, that individuals who enter other occupations like engineering do so because they find it intellectually satisfying, and yet, engineers are some of the highest paid employees. It might be the case that compensating differentials could explain the low-pay of care workers, if there is a huge supply of individuals who were willing to work at a low wage just so they can help others. But because we can not really know the true preferences of workers, it's hard to know if that is actually the case. It may also be that people first enter a helping profession because of the amenities it offers, but those amenities may mean less to them the longer they remain in the job. In these cases, the amenity of caring for others obviously cannot explain why care workers continue to be paid less over time. In short, the compensating differential argument is not that compelling. Another possible reason why helping professions are paid less is because the kind of services they provide are enjoyed by others who do not pay for them. That is, like other public goods, such as roads, highways, cleaned environments, etc. Care can benefit many people besides those who spent money on it, or so-called free riders. For instance, many people share in the benefits when children are brought up to be responsible, honest, and trustworthy individuals who treat others with courtesy and respect. Employers profit from access to honest and cooperative workers and citizens gain from having law abiding neighbors. But employers, citizens, and others do not have to pay for the work that went into producing such qualities. Who creates these forms of public goods? Parents and relatives do, of course. But to a growing degree, care workers like elementary school teachers do so also. They are paid to properly socialized children in a society where parents have less and less time to interact with their children. However, there is no practical way for those who do care work to charge a price that reflects the value of their contributions. Elementary school teachers, for example, cannot demand a fee from employers who hired their former students and benefit from their students eagerness to learn and willingness to cooperate with others. When a nurse does a good job, the patient's family who paid for the nurses services, obviously benefits, but so too do other beneficiaries of that nurses work, such as the patient's future employers, who are essentially free riders on the labor of that nurse. Also, unlike physical products like refrigerators, cars, etc, the benefits of care work are more diffuse and therefore more difficult to measure. It is harder for care workers to make the case to employers that they deserve a particular salary increase or demonstrate their added value. Yet another possible reason why care workers are paid less is that the public does not really care about their clients. Caring work involves helping people who do not have the resources to pay for their own care, the young, the sick, and the poor. In the public and non-profit sectors of the economy, levels of pay for workers and caring occupations are largely determined by political actors. The amount of money allocated to programs like Head Start, Medicaid, childcare, remedial education, and so forth, depends heavily on how much voters and state decision makers actually care about the people who would benefit from those programs. In some areas where there is a strong ideology of individualism that blames the young, the sick, and the poor for their problems, much less money is set aside to address their needs. Consequently, the people who are responsible for caring for these disadvantaged groups must work with fewer resources and at lower pay levels. A final reason why care workers are paid less, maybe that society is uneasy about attaching a price tag to something so sacred as care. That is, many people believed that money cannot or should not buy you love. This belief has perhaps had the unintended consequence of justifying paying care workers minimal salaries. We will talk more about the controversy surrounding money and care in a later module.
