Nancy Folbre

I'm an economist with a particular interest in the time and money devoted to care provision: the production, development, and maintenance of human capabilities. I'm trying as hard as I can to understand the complexity of collective conflict and bargaining, a project that falls under the rubrics of intersectionality and stratification economics. Much of my research emphasizes the importance of public goods that can't be accurately priced in the market but are crucial to our natural and social environments. Some specific questions that interest me: What determines the distribution of the costs of caring for dependents between women and men, families and taxpayers, poor and rich? How does our success in caring for one another shape larger economic outcomes? How can we develop more holistic measures of success in achieving sustainable economic development?

These are the questions I take up in my most recent book, Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First (University of California Press, 2026), which traces the history of care provision in the United States, explains why care providers remain economically vulnerable, and argues that recognizing the public benefits of care could help build the coalitions needed to put people first. My earlier books include The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems, The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values, and Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint.

I write regularly for a general audience on my personal blog, Care Think, and in venues such as The American Prospect and Dollars & Sense. For a short introduction to my work, see the video "What Is Work?" produced by the Institute for New Economic Thinking.