When unpaid cooking, cleaning and child care get a dollar value, income inequality in the US shrinks – but the gap has grown since 1965

A new economic study reveals that while valuing unpaid household labor like cooking and childcare initially narrows income inequality in the U.S., this equalizing effect has significantly diminished since 1965. Researchers found that when factoring in the dollar value of these services, the income gap between top and bottom households grew by 66% between 1965 and 2018, compared to 40% using conventional measures. This widening disparity is largely due to a decline in unpaid work hours, particularly among women, disproportionately affecting lower-income and single-parent families. The findings suggest that standard income and spending metrics may underestimate the true increase in inequality and the struggles of the lowest-income Americans. This re-evaluation highlights the critical role of unpaid labor in household living standards and its impact on economic disparities.