From Unpaid to Paid Care Work: The Macroeconomic Implications of HIV and AIDS on Women’s Time-Tax Burdens

Rania Antonopoulos and Taun Toay

This chapter considers public employment guarantee programmes in the context of South Africa as a policy tool that has the ability to address the nexus of poverty, unemployment and unpaid work burdens, all factors exacerbated by HIV and AIDS. To be effective as an intervention, the authors argue, public job creation must be gender-informed, particularly so in view of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. Paying particular attention to mitigating the ‘time-tax’ burdens of women, the chapter focuses on a South African government initiative, the Expanded Public Works Programme. This job creation programme, in addition to physical infrastructure, includes projects designed to redress social sector service delivery deficits. To help offset the destabilizing effects of HIV and AIDS and endemic poverty, the chapter highlights the need for scaling up resource allocation for Community Home-Based Care (CHBC). The authors conclude with results from macroeconomic simulations for such an enlarged programme, using a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) framework, and set out its implications for participants and policymakers.

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