"The large-scale movement of women into the paid labor market has brought sweeping change to the structure of family life, affecting who cares for the elderly and children. Today, our society depends, in part, on the caring work of many paid professionals," said Kristin Smith, family demographer at the Carsey Institute and co-author of the brief.
"High turnover in both professions contributes to lower quality care leading to unfavorable outcomes for the elderly and children," Smith said.
Direct-care workers comprise personal-care assistants, home-care aides, home-health aides and certified nursing assistants; child-care workers are preschool and nursery school teachers, center-based child-care providers and home-based family child-care providers.
Analyzing the most recent data from the Current Population Survey, the brief finds that median hourly wages for direct-care workers are higher than those for child-care workers ($9.26 and $7.69, respectively), but both groups earn substantially less than all female workers ($13.46). Direct-care workers, despite their higher median earnings, have lower total family incomes than child-care workers (average total family income of $40,445 for direct-care workers and $56,203 for child-care workers). Both types of workers are more likely to live in low-income families than all female workers.
"One in every two direct-care workers and one in three child-care workers are living in a low-income family, defined as below 200 percent of the federal poverty line," Smith said. "That's striking, because these people are working, but they're struggling to make ends meet."
"Normally, workers get higher returns on higher levels of education," said Smith. "Child-care work seems to fall short in that regard."
Both fields of care-giving are plagued by high turnover, which impedes the provision of quality care and is a cost burden to employers. Among women employed in the direct-care work force in 2005, 60 percent remained in the direct-care occupation a year later in 2006, while 33 percent left the field to work in another occupation and seven percent left the labor force altogether.
A similar proportion, 65 percent, of child-care workers were still employed as child-care workers one year later, in 2006. The brief also finds that retention is linked to wages: direct care workers with higher earnings are more likely to remain in the occupation one year later.
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