Care Economy Valuation and Women's Economic Empowerment

This paper quantifies the macroeconomic value of unpaid care and links it to women’s economic empowerment using a transparent measurement-to-policy pipeline. Leveraging a realistic synthetic time-use dataset (N=2,400 adults), we construct household satellite accounts with two standard methods replacement cost (RC) and opportunity cost (OC) and estimate empowerment effects via an index capturing decision-making, mobility, financial control, time autonomy, and collective voice. Unpaid care amounts to ≈3.8% of GDP (RC) and ≈5.5% of GDP (OC) at baseline, with women supplying the majority of hours. Inequality and life-cycle patterns are documented through a Lorenz curve of care time and an age profile of care intensity. Empowerment is modeled as a function of time allocation and service access; OLS estimates show negative associations for care hours and positive associations for paid work and formal care access, consistent with time-constraint and bargaining hypotheses. A policy counterfactual that expands childcare/eldercare access raises paid work hours and empowerment, generating a GDP gain ≈ ₹0.58 trillion against a program cost ≈ ₹0.044 trillion, implying a benefit–cost ratio ≈ 13.2. The framework time-use valuation, empowerment modeling, and cost-effectiveness-offers a replicable template for integrating the care economy into national accounts and for designing “care-plus” policies that advance women’s agency alongside growth.