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The COVID-19 pandemic has both devastated employment prospects, particularly of women, and exposed the longstanding neglect of care systems and poor employment conditions of care workers. Most recovery programs propose to stimulate employment by focusing on investment in construction, ignoring gender equality issues. This paper argues for public investment in high-quality care services and better conditions for care workers to build a more gender-equal caring economy. Using input–output analysis, across selected European Union countries and the United States, the study shows a care-led recovery has superior employment outcomes to investment in construction, even when wages and hours are matched. In particular, matching employment and wages in care to the high levels of Scandinavian countries would raise employment rates by more than 5 percentage points and halve most gender employment gaps, while the net cost of investment in construction that achieved as much would generally be at least twice as high.

Over the last thirty years, economic models have been developed that recognize that potentially conflicting interests may shape household decisions and the sharing of resources within families. This paper provides an overview of how decision-making within households has been modeled within economics, presents the main benefits and limitations of those models and critically assesses their usefulness to those from other disciplines interested in within-household distribution. Our main focus is on the theory, empirical application and results of the currently dominant collective models, but we also look at developments that led up to them and some subsequent extensions and alternative approaches. Given the weight policy-makers and others put on economic and quantitative evidence, it is incumbent on researchers of all disciplines to understand on what such evidence is based, that is, the achievements and limitations of the models used to produce it and the assumptions that lie behind them.