The Care Policy Landscape

Authors: Janet C. Gornick, Candace Howes, and Laura Braslow

Publication: For Love and Money: Care Provision in the United States. Chapter 6, pp. 112-139

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Editor: Nancy Folbre

Date: August 2012

Excerpt:

“Care Policy” is not a common category in American social policy research, which often organizes social policies simply by the characteristics of recipients. The widely referenced congressional publication Compilation of the Social Security Laws (the “Green Book”), for example, categorizes U.S. social policies primarily according tot he groups served: the elderly, survivors of deceased workers, people with disabilities, the blind, the unemployed, veterans, mothers, and children. American social policy typically disaggregates policies into brand domains such as income support, employment, housing, and wealth policy (Blau and Abramovitz 2010). In the political arena, public initiatives with budgetary components are often separate from those that do not require separate fiscal outlays. That has the effect of decoupling, for example, child care policies (which generally require public spending) from family leave policies (which often grant leave rights, but not wage replacement and thus do not require direct governmental expenditures.

Before we can give care policy the sustained and systemic attention that is deserves, we must develop a clear definition of its content and boundaries. As several contributors to this volume have argued, defining “care” represents and ongoing conceptual challenge; the same is true, of course, with respect to “care policy.” Identifying and assessing care policies is especially challenging in the United States because of the complex, often overlapping divisions of labor between national and state governments. In many aspects of care policy, both federal and state government are key factors in revenue generation, spending, and direct provision of care, as well as in various aspects of rule setting and regulation from determining eligibility to quality assurance.

Link: The Care Policy Landscape (PDF)