巴德学院利维经济研究所-将劳动的社会再生产纳入宏观经济理论：有偿生产中的无偿照料和生产率（英）

Working Paper No. 1083 Integrating the Social Reproduction of Labor into Macroeconomic Theory: Unpaid Caregiving and Productivity in Paid Production by Mark Setterfield New School for Social Research June 2025 The Levy Economics Institute Working Paper Collection presents research in progress by Levy Institute scholars and conference participants. The purpose of the series is to disseminate ideas to and elicit comments from academics and professionals. Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, founded in 1986, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independently funded research organization devoted to public service. Through scholarship and economic research, it generates viable, effective public policy responses to important economic problems that profoundly affect the quality of life in the United States and abroad. Levy Economics Institute P.O. Box 5000 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 http://www.levyinstitute.org Copyright © Levy Economics Institute 2025 All rights reserved ISSN 1547-366X 1 ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the integration of unpaid caregiving in the household into short- and long-term macroeconomic theory and, in particular, the theoretical structure of production on the supply side of the economy. The ambition of the project is to furnish a general theoretical representation of how unpaid caregiving and its (gendered) social structure contribute to the technical conditions of production in the sphere of marketed output. In so doing, it aims to provide macro theorists with an apparatus that allows consistent description of both short-term (levels of activity) and long-term (rates of growth) macro outcomes in a manner that routinely integrates feminist insights regarding the gendered structure of the social reproduction of labor into macroeconomic analysis. JEL CODES: E11, E12, B54, E23, J13, J16, J24, O33 KEYWORDS: Social reproduction of labor, unpaid caregiving, macroeconomic theory, potential output, natural rate of growth, technical change. 2 1. INTRODUCTION According to Folbre (2023), in addition to its field-specific concerns with issues related to gender and sexuality, feminist economics should permeate all micro- and macro-theoretical arguments, because of the breadth and generality of its insights into matters pertaining to both structure and agency in the economic sphere. Responding to Folbre’s challenge involves, in part, transcending the “boundary problem,” according to which different subjective values are attached to different concepts and activities in economics (Dengler and Strunk 2018). These values then shape the focus of formal economic theory.1 Motivated by these considerations, this paper seeks to contribute to the project addressing the question: in light of Folbre, what should macro theory look like? One aspect of this project concerns the effect on labor productivity in the sphere of the paid production of gendered, unpaid caregiving associated with the so