We could reduce the global gender pay gap by 8.6%, or about $527 billion if high-quality childcare was provided to all women around the world.
Eurasia Group analysis provides a new statistical grounding on women's economic empowerment with respect to care policies.
As part of a series of work conducted to advance gender equality around the world, Eurasia Group performed a set of original calculations to broadly quantify the benefits of providing universal access to childcare worldwide.
EG found that if high-quality childcare was provided to all women around the world, the global gender pay gap would reduce by 8.6%, or about $527 billion. Generally, sub-Saharan African and Latin American countries see the largest reductions in the gender pay gap, while European countries see the smallest ones, though these reductions are still significant.
EG's approach involved calculating the percent of the gender pay gap that is due to lack of childcare and surveying existing research to determine a “treatment effect” of providing healthcare. Most existing literature on the gender pay gap that addressed the research finds a 0 – 30% effect on the gap as a result of the provision of care.
Four key trends emerge from the analysis:
- Among countries with the biggest reductions in the pay gap, the current level of the gender pay gap varies considerably.
- Care-related inactivity rates are uniformly high among the biggest improvers, as are percentage increases in the economically active population once care is made available.
- In contrast, countries with the smallest reductions see the gap fall by less than 1% of GDP. For these countries, the current gender pay gap also tends to be small.
- Care-related inactivity varies significantly country by country, but the impact on the economically active female population is small in most cases.
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