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Why 'Productivity' Metrics Fail to Capture Care Work — And How That Skews National Accounts
为何‘生产力’指标无法衡量照护工作——及其对国民账户的扭曲
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National productivity statistics exclude unpaid caregiving—childcare, elder support, chronic illness management—even though it enables formal labor participation.国家生产力统计未计入无偿照护工作——如育儿、赡养老人、慢性病管理——尽管这些工作支撑着正式劳动力的参与。
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When mothers reduce paid hours to care for aging parents, GDP registers only the income loss, not the value preserved through avoided nursing home costs.当母亲减少有薪工时以照顾年迈父母时，GDP仅记录收入损失，却未体现因避免养老院支出而保留的价值。
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Time-use surveys consistently show women perform 2.5 times more unpaid care work than men globally, yet this remains invisible in output measures.时间使用调查持续显示，全球女性承担的无偿照护工作量是男性的2.5倍，但这一事实却在产出指标中完全隐形。
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Attempts to monetize care—using replacement-cost or opportunity-cost methods—yield wildly divergent estimates, undermining comparability.尝试用替代成本法或机会成本法对照护工作进行货币化估值，所得结果差异巨大，削弱了可比性。
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Policy decisions—from pension reforms to childcare subsidies—are made without quantifying this foundational economic activity.从养老金改革到托育补贴等政策决策，均未量化这一基础性经济活动。
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The OECD now publishes experimental satellite accounts for unpaid work, but they lack statutory weight in fiscal planning.经合组织（OECD）现已发布无偿工作的实验性卫星账户，但其在财政规划中缺乏法定效力。
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Care-intensive sectors like education and healthcare face chronic underfunding because their outputs resist conventional productivity measurement.教育与医疗等照护密集型行业长期资金不足，因其产出难以适用传统生产力衡量标准。
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Automation rhetoric further marginalizes care work, framing it as 'low-skill' despite its emotional, cognitive, and relational complexity.自动化话语进一步边缘化照护工作，将其标签为‘低技能’，无视其内在的情感、认知与关系复杂性。
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Revising national accounts to include care would recalibrate debates about labor force participation and intergenerational equity.将照护纳入国民账户体系，将重塑关于劳动力参与率与代际公平的讨论。
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This omission isn’t technical—it reflects enduring hierarchies that privilege market-mediated over socially necessary labor.这一遗漏并非技术问题，而是根深蒂固的等级观念所致——它更看重市场中介劳动，而非社会必需劳动。
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Until care work appears in headline indicators, its erosion will continue unchecked by macroeconomic policy.只要照护工作未出现在宏观核心指标中，其持续弱化就无法受到宏观经济政策的有效遏制。
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True productivity accounting must ask not just 'how much we produce,' but 'what makes production possible at all.'真正的生产力核算，不仅要问‘我们生产了多少’，更要问‘是什么让生产本身成为可能’。