Emerging Care Shifts & What They Signal for India's Care Economy
- Leena Chakrabarti
- Aug 12, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 12, 2025
This article is the final one in the 3-Part series on The Invisible Infrastructure Underwriting India’s Economic Development
The trilogy also anchors the 6-part inaugural edition of theZURI Lever - Caring Futures
Part 1 makes the economic case for care. Read the article here
Part 2 highlights India’s Care Investment Deficit . Read the article here
Part 3 (this) maps Global policy shifts, from budgeting frameworks, labour reforms to care inclusive planning.
Each part builds on the argument that recognising and financing care is no longer optional, it is an economic imperative
The three-part series so far...
In Part 1 of the Caring Futures edition, we laid bare the scale and economic value of India's invisible care infrastructure, nearly $955 billion worth of unpaid care work, disproportionately performed by women, powering the country’s growth is left unaccounted, underfunded and invisible.
Part 2 delved in India’s severe care investment deficit, fragmented policies, regulatory gaps, and chronic under-financing, with just 3045 active creches serving 160 million children under six, as a case in point.
Part 3, the final piece of the three-part series, offers a snapshot of the emerging models in global care policy landscape. It surveys the institutional shifts, financing commitments, and governance innovations being adopted across regions, without going into the full detail of each model. This three-part series serves as a strategic overview, an executive summary of sorts, to set the frame for the rest of the Caring Futures Lever Edition. Over the next few months, we will unpack each of these themes in depth, from comparative care financing models to regulatory architectures, workforce systems, and India’s eldercare landscape.
In particular, our upcoming piece on Global Care Financing Models will present a detailed analysis of more than 10 country level approaches, including costing, revenue strategies, and the fiscal pathways that made them possible. Track the Caring Futures edition here
Emerging Shifts - Care as Growth Strategy
Across the world, care is starting to get reframed, not as welfare, but as a productive, job-generating resilient economic sector. Countries treating care as infrastructure, similar to roads, electricity or digital networks are starting to see measurable returns in GDP, employment, and gender equity.
1. OECD Countries - Investing in Care to Drive Growth
Countries in the OECD have led efforts to position care as part of their growth and recovery agendas, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canada launched a $30 billion National Childcare Strategy (2021) to deliver $10 per day childcare by 2026, expected to generate 240,000 new jobs and a 1.2% increase in GDP by 2030.
France and Germany have scaled up public eldercare and early childhood education as part of long term productivity strategies, stimulate labour force participation and manage demographic change
The European Union is moving toward a Care Strategy, linking care access to women’s employment and demographic sustainability
These shifts are supported by macroeconomic modelling that shows investment in care has higher employment and gender equity multipliers than comparable investment in traditional sectors like construction or defence
2. Latin America: National Care Systems accelerating the care economy
Latin American countries have pioneered integrated national care systems, positioning care as both a social right and a labour market intervention.
Uruguay’s National Integrated Care System (SNIC), launched in 2015 institutionalised public investment across child, disability & elder care. It created new jobs, supported home-based caregivers and regulated private provision. Care services are now co-financed through taxation and social insurance.
Colombia and Argentina are developing satellite accounts to quantify unpaid care work and embed it into GDP-adjacent planning.
In Chile, care infrastructure is a priority sector under national economic recovery plans.
These models are built on cross ministerial governance, are worker protections, regulated service delivery & public investment, not just service delivery through nonprofits and/or market forces alone
3. Asia-Pacific - Momentum Building but Patchy
While many Asian economies face similar demographic and gender equity pressures, care investment remains uneven.
South Korea, post-COVID, invested heavily in community based eldercare and childcare systems. Its public care employment programme targeted women re entering the workforce and has been shown to generate 1.6x job multipliers.
Indonesia piloted community childcare and eldercare centres through its PKH conditional cash transfer programme, showing improvements in maternal employment and child health.
Japan established a universal Long Term Care Insurance (LTCI) scheme in 2000, funded through payroll taxes and general revenues. It enabled both institutional and in home care expansion, relieving family burden and creating over 1 million jobs.
However, many countries, including India, Bangladesh, Philippines have yet to build integrated, publicly financed systems. Care remains primarily a household obligation or private expense, limiting scalability and equity
4. Multilateral & Intergovernmental institutions - Care Systems!
Several institutions are beginning to frame care as a macroeconomic lever, not just a gender issue
Asian Development Bank (ADB) called for “transformative care systems” in Asia, emphasising care as essential to unlocking women's labour force participation and demographic resilience.
UN Women, ILO, and the OECD have all issued joint calls to recognise, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work, framing it as a pillar of economic growth & inclusive recovery.
The World Bank’s Human Capital Project is beginning to include care indicators in its measurement of productivity and lifetime earnings.
The shift is nascent yet, efforts remains fragmented, often buried within health, education or nutrition silos
Implications for India...
While we will take a deeper look at some of the models and approaches being implemented in similar economies, in the upcoming pieces as part of Caring Futures edition, with each day of inaction & ignorance of the power of the care economy, India is risking
Losing productivity gains from its demographic dividend
Missing job creation potential in the care sector
Stalled progress on women’s labour force participation
Growing inequality in access to basic care
Instead, a shift is needed toward care as a national growth priority, integrated into fiscal policy, urban design, workforce planning and macroeconomic models
Care is no less than infrastructure, it is economic infrastructure
It enables workforce participation, stabilises demographics, supports human capital, and creates future proof jobs, all at a time when India like many other emerging economies is seeking resilient economic growth. Yet, care remains absent from budget speeches, invisible in economic surveys and missing from infrastructure plans.
India, like many Asian economies, has an opportunity to reimagine its growth architecture, not by importing expensive models, but by investing in what already sustains its economy every day, the currently invisible care work. A few shifts might pave the way....
From siloed schemes to a national care investment strategy spanning childcare, eldercare, disability support, special care and long-term care.
From household burden to a care economy with co-investment by government, donors and the private sector.
From adhoc budgetary provisions and measurement gaps to integrated care satellite accounts and budgeting frameworks that value unpaid work
From fragmented services to care-inclusive urban and industrial planning, where creches, eldercare, and mobility support are built into India's infrastructure push
From invisible care work to measurement, regulation, and accountability that shapes a thriving visible care economy, an economic engine for resilient growth
Why Now?
India is in its decisive growth window: demographic transition, digital expansion, and infrastructure scaling are converging.
The country cannot afford to leave almost a trillion hours of unpaid care work invisible or unsupported and unaccounted, work that is overwhelmingly performed by women, and at the cost of their labour force participation.
Ignoring care now will widen gender gaps, slow labour force expansion, and strain fiscal systems in the coming decade.
We are building highways, smart cities, and digital stacks, but without consideration of care, these foundations remain exclusionary.
Coming Up Next in the Caring Futures - theZURILever Edition
Eldercare in India - Aspirations Without Architecture
India’s eldercare landscape reflects growing awareness of demographic change but lacks the infrastructure, policy coherence and public financing needed to meet the scale and urgency of the transition. With over 153 million Indians now above the age of 60 and the number projected to double by 2050, elderhood is the fastest-growing life stage in the country. But the eldercare crisis is looming large.
Pilot programmes, portals, and helplines signal intent but without budgets, workforce or regulation, they cannot meet the demands of a rapidly greying population. A robust eldercare strategy is no longer optional, it is economic, gender & demographic common sense.
