Long-Term Care Protection for Older Persons – Care Workforce Mostly Women – Wages & Social Protections Poor
Author: WUNRN
Date: November 6, 2015
Long-Term Care Protection for Older Persons – Care Workforce Mostly Women – Wages & Social Protections Poor
Direct Link to Full 115-Page 2015 Document:
Long-Term Care Protection for Older Persons – Extension of Social Security:
A Review of Coverage Deficits in 46 Countries – ILO Geneva – Older WOMEN
While LTC – Long-Term Care politics in all countries place a significant amount of responsibility and financial burden on informal carers, particularly family members, they remain largely forgotten in terms of public support in cash or in kind, such as in the form of social protection benefits or training (Table 4).
We observe that the LTC workforce is highly unbalanced in terms of gender and age. Further, working conditions such as wages and social protection coverage are poor, even in the most advanced high-income countries.
In these countries we find that 86 per cent of the Long-Term Care workforce is made up of women aged 40 and above. The majority of them – up to 70 per cent – are foreign-born.
Table 4. Common characteristics of the LTC workforce and core working conditions (selected countries, 2015) Characteristics | Majority of the global formal LTC workforce | Majority of the global informal workforce | |
Gender |
Women: More than 86 % of the workforce
– Canada: 92.0 % – Denmark: 96.2 % – Japan: 86.9 % – Korea: 92.9 % – USA: 89.7 %
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Age | Average age 40+
– Australia: Up to 70 % aged 45+ – Japan: 60 % aged 50+ – New Zealand: 50 % aged 40-60 – USA: Average age home-care workers: 43
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Nationality | Foreign-born workers/Migrants: Up to 70 %
– Austria: 50.0 % – Italy: 70.0 % – Sweden: 20.0 % – New Zealand: 24.3 % (foreign-trained) – United States: 33.0 %
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Working hours | Often full time | Mostly part time, particularly if family members | |
Wages | Low:
– USA: Approx. 51 % of average wages – UK: 14 % above minimum wages |
Low or no:
– France: Minimum wages – Most countries: None for family workers |
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Skills | Low | Low or no | |
Work place | Institutions | Providing home-based care in private homes | |
Social protection | Covered accordingly to country regulation | No social protection coverage (few exceptions, e.g. Germany) |
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