In most mid-20th century industrial societies, long-term care for senior citizens was mainly organized as unpaid work in the private family household, and was seen as woman’s duty. Since the 1990s welfare state policies towards long-term care (LTC) for older people in need of care have experienced fundamental reforms in many countries.

Since then, most European welfare states have introduced new social rights for seniors in need of care and extended the care infrastructure based on publicly funded care provision. In part, long-term care reforms were based on the political support for the marketization of care. As a consequence of the welfare state change, informal, unpaid work in the private sphere of the family has on the one hand been partly transformed into formal, paid care work in the formal employment system outside the family. The provision of extra-familial care services is commonly referred to as “de-familialising” type of welfare state policy as it offers family members – mainly women – the choice not to provide care for their relatives in need of care. On the other hand, many welfare states have also introduced pay for caring family members as well as elements of social security, and despite de-familalising policies many older people still receive care by – mostly female – family members.

The stream aims to analyse the change in welfare state policies towards extra-familial care and family care work, and the consequences for workers in both types of work, as well as for social inequality and gender inequality and poverty.

Conveners and Discussants

Birgit Pfau-Effinger, University of Hamburg, Germany pfau-effinger@wiso.uni-hamburg.de
Hildegard Theobald, University of Vechta, Germany, Hildegard.Theobald@uni-vechta.de