As debates continue over paid leave, child care, long-term care, and workplace flexibility in U.S. policy discussions, a fundamental question often gets overlooked: Who is doing the care work, and how has that changed over time? 

A new study by LDI Senior Fellow Pilar Gonalons‑Pons and Zohra Ansari‑Thomas examines five decades of data to reveal how Americans divide the labor of caregiving–both paid and unpaid–for both children and adults. They find relative stability in the division of care work across domains–paid and unpaid, child and adult–but substantial changes across gender and racial groups. 

Notably, men are doing more at home, and care responsibilities are falling less on nonwhite women than in the past. 

Yet despite these changes, structural inequalities persist, and public policies have not kept pace. As policymakers grapple with how to care for the young and old among us, this research offers critical insights into who provides care now. 

Here, Gonalons-Pons, the Alber-Klingelhofer Presidential Associate Professor of Sociology, discusses the study:

Why look at the full picture of caregiving in America?

In discussions about the care economy, it is commonly believed that caregiving has “transferred” from families to markets. But until now, no one had actually looked at the numbers to estimate whether it is true that a growing share of caregiving is being performed by paid caregivers rather than unpaid ones over time. Similarly, with a growing aging population, scholars and commentators often say that the importance of adult care is increasing relative to child care. However, just like statements about “marketization of care,” nobody had analyzed the data to estimate whether it is true that more of the overall care we provide today–when we combine paid and unpaid child and adult care–is care going to adults rather than care going to children compared to a few decades ago. 

What did we know about gender and race in caregiving before this study?

We also lacked strong evidence on whether the distribution of caregiving by gender and race has shifted over time. Scholars often say that caregiving is becoming “degendered” (because men do more of it now than in the past) or that it is becoming “less racialized” (because non-white women have more labor market opportunities than in the past). But many of these claims focus on just one type of caregiving. Before our paper, it was not known whether caregiving as a whole, paid and unpaid, child and adult, is becoming degendered and less racialized. Even if more caregiving is done by paid caregivers, that may not be as significant as expected because paid care continues to be more gendered and racialized than unpaid care.  

What surprised you about unpaid caregiving trends over time? 

Our most important finding is that the significance of unpaid child care has increased over time, despite declining fertility rates, and this is key to explaining the slow pace of marketization and aging in caregiving, and the substantial evidence for degendering. 

We expected to find strong evidence of “marketization”–growth in paid care–and the share of care going to adults, but we found much smaller changes than expected in relative increases in paid care and in the proportion of care for adults. This was very surprising. We found that the share of total care work provided by paid caregivers has not increased significantly since the 1960s. And we found that the share of total care work going to adults compared to children has only moderately increased since the 1960s. This is in part because unpaid child care has increased, driven by shifting parenting norms, including the emergence of more intensive parenting.

How has the gender and racial makeup of caregivers changed? 

In terms of gender, we found a substantial decline in the proportion of overall care work done by women compared to men, which is mostly driven by the fact that fathers are indeed more involved in unpaid childcare. On race, we found a small decline in the overrepresentation of nonwhite women, but an indication that this overrepresentation can easily grow in the future if the paid adult care sector expands, as racial segregation in this segment of the labor market is increasing rather than decreasing. 

How was the study conducted—and what are its limitations? 

We combined data from two longstanding national survey tools run by the federal government. We used descriptive statistics and analysis that allowed us to break down the component parts of the changes to address key, previously unanswered questions. Our key innovation is putting together data that is not usually integrated: paid and unpaid caregiving, as well as child and adult caregiving. The main limitation is that the way unpaid care is measured has changed over time, and there are some types of caregiving that are not well captured in the datasets we used. 

What do these caregiving trends mean for U.S. policy?

Our data reinforce the slow, insufficient growth of the adult care provision sector. The population is aging and there is evidence that adult care needs are growing, but the amount of care people receive is not keeping pace. Our study contributes to the growing body of evidence about this unmet need.

An additional implication is that we need better data about caregiving. The fragmentation between research on paid versus unpaid and child versus adult care are hindering a comprehensive understanding of the care economy. This limits the search for policy solutions on caregiving for children and adults. I’m part of a National Academy of Sciences panel that is tackling this research fragmentation.

What’s next in the research on the economics of caregiving?

I’m working on a project that explores the economic consequences–or ‘economic penalties’–of caregiving for all four major types of caregiving: paid and unpaid, child and adult. I want to estimate the inequality impact of devaluing care–that is, how much would our society’s gender, class, and racial inequality change if caregiving were not devalued and underpaid? 

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 The study “The Social Division of Care Work Time Over Half a Century” by Pilar Gonalons-Pons and  Zohra Ansari‑Thomas appeared in the April 1, 2025 issue of Demography.

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