Political Economy of Domestic Work: Past and Present

Prior to industrialization, a significant portion of women engaged in agricultural work and domestic services.  The pattern changed with industrial expansion and increases in women's educational investment.  In recent years, we are witnessing an intriguing reversal in an expansion of domestic services at least in some European countries.  Causally speaking, however, the recent expansion of domestic services sector is not simply about going back to the old days.  We can think of three inter-related “push” factors that contributed to the new expansion of domestic services: (i) increases in married women’s activity rates, (ii) inflow of low-skill immigrants; and (iii) increases in demand for elderly care as a result of the dramatic demographic shift.

It is important that we place these three “push” factors within specific national institutional contexts.  Specific national institutional contexts shape the type and the amount of domestic services that develop.  Welfare states that offer generous social services, for instance, crowd out private markets for domestic services.  Wage structures and working hours also affect supply and demand for domestic services.  Wage compression makes unskilled services more expensive.  Flexible working hours may suppress potential demands for domestic services by enabling married women to reduce working hours to balance paid and unpaid work.  How open a particular country is to low skill immigration also affects the supply f services. 

This paper examines the effects of national institutions on the development of domestic services by looking at how the afore-mentioned national institutions shape different “domestic work” regimes.  This paper will identify different regime types and the causal dynamics that have produced them in OECD countries.