Ideas
CEC - The Caring Economy Campaign

WHAT IS THE CEC? ... The Caring Economy Campaign ... Caring Counts... for People, Prosperity, Planet

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

WHAT IS THE CEC? The Caring Economy Campaign Caring Counts... for People, Prosperity, Planet

OUR MISSION

The mission of CPS’ Caring Economy Campaign (CEC) is to shift economic measurements, policies, and practices from the current focus on GDP and Wall Street to a humane and prosperous economy that recognizes the enormous return on investment in the most important, yet undervalued, human work: the work of caring for and educating people, starting in early childhood.

CEC programs provide the missing foundations needed to support the many grassroots organizations today working to end cycles of poverty and promote women’s empowerment, economic security, and justice for all. The CEC demonstrates the financial return on investment from paid sick and family leave, quality affordable Pre-K, paycheck fairness, and other policies needed for equal rights, opportunities, and U.S. competiveness in the knowledge/service economy.

CARE = PROSPERITY

The contributions of people and nature are the real wealth of a nation: A caring economy is essential for prosperity in our current knowledge/service economic era, which runs on “high quality human capital” – people able to fully express their potentials for learning, empathy, collaboration, and creativity.

The widening gaps between haves and have-nots in the U.S jeopardize our shared prosperity. A higher percentage of children live in poverty here than in any other industrialized country, except Romania, women in communities of color are poorest, maternal mortality has doubled in the past 25 years, African American women are more than three times more likely than white women to die in childbirth, and elderly women (most of whom were full- or part-time caregivers) are nearly twice as likely to be poor as elderly men.

Investing in care grows our real wealth: For national economic competitiveness in the post-industrial global economy, and to prevent this suffering and injustice, we need new economic measures and policies that recognize the enormous financial return from investing in caring for people in both the market and non-market household economic sectors. Investing in our human infrastructure reduces the back-end costs of crime, illness, and lost potential – the enormous yet avoidable costs of an un-caring economy.

Empowering women is good for the world: Because women do most of the work of care for little or no pay, the Caring Economy Campaign is essential to lift women and families out of poverty. And, raising the status of women has positive economic and social benefits for everyone. Nations where the status of women is higher have paid family leave, high quality early childhood education, and stipends to families for care work. Because they invest in caring for and educating their people, these nations rank high in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Reports and the UN Human Development Reports

THREE INTERACTIVE STRATEGIES FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE

1. Public Policy & Social Wealth Indicators. GDP does not show the real condition of our people or our economy – and leads to imbalanced and unsuccessful policies. In 2010, CPS commissioned The State of Society: Measuring Economic Success and Human Well-Being from the Urban Institute (UI), now endorsed by leaders of organizations representing 30 million people. In 2012, CPS co-hosted with UI a two-day meeting of economists and other experts on developing Social Wealth Indicators that demonstrate the return on investment in care work, early childhood education, and other undervalued activities. National Indicators and Social Wealth reports the meeting’srecommendations, including a clearinghouse and open source website for Social Wealth indicator development at the local, state, national, and international levels.

2. Leadership & Learning Programs: .Certified leaders from 16 countries have been trained through CPS’s online Caring Economy Leadership Program. Other learning programs include a free monthly Caring Economy Starter Course webinar and the Cultural Transformation Master Class. 300 participants have now been trained through all CEC leadership and learning programs and have given the program very high ratings. To enroll in a CELP program, please click here. CEC Congressional briefings, courses at universities, presentations at conferences, and articles in academic and popular publications, op-eds, blogs, websites, and media (conventional and social) also offer Caring Economy education.

3. Coalition & Movement Building. CPS’s Caring Economy Campaign coalition is composed of local, national, and international organizations representing women, children, caregivers, health care workers, teachers, socially responsible businesses, advocates for civil and human rights, environmentalists, faith-based activists, think tanks, and others, so far totaling 14 million people. To join the CEC coalition (it is free and takes less than five minutes to complete), please click here. CEC coalition partners are invited to share articles, blog postings, fact sheets, videos, and other resources for collectively creating a more prosperous and caring economy at www.caringeconomy.org.

GET INVOLVED

Watch and share CEC’s 3-minute video with colleagues, networks, and friends
Share ideas via the CEC blog, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media
Donate to the Caring Economy Campaign through a tax-deductible contribution
Form study and action groups based on The Real Wealth of Nations, which inspired the CEC

Caring Economy Campaign Advisory Council

What You Can Do

THREE REASONS WHY WE NEED A CARING ECONOMY

1: Caring is crucial. 2: Caring societies build stronger economies. 3: Gender matters!

In the receding waters of the recent economic tidal wave, a consensus is emerging that GDP doesn’t accurately identify the real condition of our economy, and that “something” is seriously missing from our economic measures.

CEC believes that missing “something” is “care.”

REASON 1. Caring is crucial

Neuroscience shows that quality childcare and early childhood education are vital to optimal human development. In the post-industrial knowledge/service economy, our economic success depends on what economists call high quality human capital. Caring—beginning in early childhood and throughout the lifespan—is crucial in terms of developing this high quality human capital.

Caring for nature is also crucial—our survival depends on ending the era of conquest and domination. The 2005 United Nations-sponsored Millennium Ecosystems Assessment reports that human activity over the past 50 years has: depleted 60% of the world’s grasslands, forests, farmlands, rivers, and lakes; destroyed 1/5th of the world’s coral reefs; and destroyed 1/3rd of the world’s mangrove forests.

In The Real Wealth of Nations (2007), Riane Eisler—whose vision aligns with others such as Amartya Sen, Nancy Folbre, Randy Albelda, Jane Dutton, and W. Steven Barnett—proposes a full-spectrum economics, making it possible to measure the work of caring and caregiving. Eisler suggests that to measure our real wealth, we must include all of the pieces of the economic puzzle:

conventional sectors—market, government, and illegal economies

NEW sectors—unpaid community, household, and natural economies

REASON 2. Caring societies build stronger economies

At the dawn of the 20th century, the Nordic nations were so poor that they experienced famines. Now, because these societies invested in their human infrastructures, they regularly rank high in the UN Human Development Reports and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Reports. Examples of their caring investment in human infrastructure include:
excellent child-care
universal health care
paid parental leave
elder care with dignity
high quality universal early education
stipends to families for childcare
green environmental policies
40% representation of women in national legislatures.

REASON 3. Gender matters!

A CPS study titled Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life (1995) was one of the first to analyze statistical data from 89 nations comparing the staWomen, Men & Global Book Covertus of women with general quality of life indicators (such as infant mortality, human rights, and environmental regulations). The study found that the status of women can be a better predictor of general quality of life than GDP.

More recent studies, such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Reports and the World Values Surveys, have also linked the status of women to a nation’s economic success.

Research also indicates that the failure to give adequate value to the work of caring and caregiving is a major factor in the disproportionate poverty of women in the United States, and most other countries. This has extremely negative impacts on children, especially since woman-headed families are the poorest worldwide, directly affecting such critical matters as adequate nutrition, health care, education, and other factors in child welfare and development.

For more, see Riane Eisler's The Real Wealth of Nations (2007), Nancy Folbre's The Invisible Heart (2001), and Devaki Jain and Nirmala Banerjee, eds. The Tyranny of the Household (1985).

REAL WEALTH IS . . .

The conventional view of wealth is money, possessions, and property. But the real wealth of a nation consists of the contributions of its people and nature. So, we need what we haven't had: an economic system that gives visibility and value to the work of caring for people and our Mother Earth.

To build this economic reality, we have to work together to change the rules of the economic game. This is the theme of Eisler's book The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics and the goal of the Center for Partnership Studies Caring Economics campaign.

Some people in the U.S. think that the next generation will be the first to NOT surpass the current generation’s wealth–and by that they mean the accumulation of money, possessions, and property. However, we have to ask, were we really wealthy? Financial wealth can disappear, like the credit swaps and derivatives did, in a matter of seconds.

What many are discovering is that the current financial wealth system often comes at the expense of our children, our families, communities, and the planet. They are waking up to a new definition of wealth. We need an economic system that make it possible to have healthy food, good housing, enriching schools, natural and recreational space, and a sense of community.

Study after study shows that what people truly find most valuable are relationships, meaning, service, and a sense of purpose. But the current economic system does not support or give value to caring for people, starting in early childhood, and caring for our Mother Earth. We can, and must, change this! We can have an economic system that meets everyone's material needs and makes it possible for us to have time and energy for our children, our communities, and ourselves.

Riane Eisler at the Australia 21 Resiliency Conference, February 2010