2020. 02. 12



Care policy has focused on supporting the childcare for ‘working mom’. Increasingly, the policy tends to expand to ‘working dad’. Jiweon Jeon, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Transnational Migration and Social Inclusion said, “It should not be a social structure that gives preference only to those with children. If a single person needs to take care of himself or his parents, everyone should be able to take care leave.”



Recently, among care researchers, attempts have been made to economically estimate the value of care that has been deemed negligible. The research team of Professor Maria Floro of the American University of the United States revealed the results of tentatively deriving the value of unpaid care work in Korea at $ 360.7 billion in 2009 and $ 390.2 billion in 2014.



This figure corresponds to 34% and 28% of Korea’s gross domestic product (GDP), respectively. Prof Floro said at the conference of ”Values of Care Work and Social Inclusion” held at Seoul National University in October of last year, “We need to be able to measure it properly and prove that there is a relationship between public investment in care and job creation, higher productivity and economic growth.” However, there was a comment that it should not be focused solely on the payment of all care work, but a society in which men and women share care work equally is desirable.