Deconstructing the Supply and Demand for Care Work: Some Policy Implications

Abstract

Globalization has changed the topography of world markets and the processes of exchange and agreements. Some of these changes are: movements of human labor across countries; the widening wage differentials between the North and the South; the leveling up of standards of services and the changing concept of work across time and space. There are certain demographic changes that have affected the supply of and demand for labor in different countries. There is an aging population in richer countries in need of elder care and domestic service on one side, and an oversupply of labor in developing countries willing to take on the job and wage gaps amongst countries on the other. This article seeks to show (and hypothesize) that these processes of labor exchange have affected perspectives about the meaning/s of care work, which used to be work in the intimate sphere, but is now part of the public sphere. By looking into the labor market within which these movements are taking place, policy gaps were identified which the Philippine government have yet to attend to and improve on.