Urgent Action Needed To Avert Looming Global Care Crisis: International Labor Organization (ILO) Report

Investment in the care economy needs to be doubled to prevent a looming global care crisis impacted by aging societies, a new report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) said Thursday.

GENEVA, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Jun, 2018 ) :Investment in the care economy needs to be doubled to prevent a looming global care crisis impacted by aging societies, a new report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) said Thursday.

Around 269 million new jobs could be created if investment in education, health, and social work were doubled by 2030, said the ILO report titled "Care Work and Care Jobs".

To create those jobs sweeping changes in policies need to address the rising need for care and tackle the huge disparity between women's and men's care responsibilities, the report said.

It said that 2.1 billion people were in need of care in 2015, including 1.9 billion children under 15, and 200 million older persons.

By 2030, this number is expected to reach 2.3 billion, driven by an additional 200 million older persons and children.

"Asia and the Pacific are predicted to experience the world's highest increase in older person dependency ratios, from 3.7 percent in 2015 to 4.9 percent in 2030," said the report.

That means that for every 100 potential unpaid carers there will be almost 5 people aged at or above their healthy life expectancy at 60 years to be cared for.

In 2030, Japan is predicted to register an older person dependency ratio of 12.0 percent, the third highest in the world.

While the same value for China will be 6.4 percent and for India, 4.0 percent, said the report.

"The global prominence of nuclear families and single-headed households, and the growth of women's employment in certain countries increase the demand for care workers," said Laura Addati, lead author of the report.

She said that if not addressed, current deficits in care work and its quality will create "a severe and unsustainable global care crisis and further increase gender inequalities in the world of work".

Data from 64 countries representing two-thirds of the world's working age population showed that 16.4 billion hours a day are spent in unpaid care work equivalent to 2 billion people working eight hours a day with no remuneration.

Were such services to be valued on the basis of an hourly minimum wage, they would amount to 9 percent of global GDP or 11 trillion U.S. Dollars (purchasing power parity in 2011).