The Atlantic has a fun article on something that's been quietly irking me that I didn't have a name for:
“These numbers are what we might call “decorative statistics.” Their purpose is not to convey an actual amount of money but to sound big and impressive. That doesn’t keep them from being added, subtracted, divided, or multiplied to yield other decorative statistics.”
Their opening example of a decorative statistic is an old enemy of mine: my great uncle said that we lose 90% of our body heat from our heads and insisted I wear an incredibly embarrassing neon beanie with a giant pom pom to the bus stop every morning.
You might have heard a different number for how much of our heat is lost through our heads. The exact number doesn't matter, since it's based on a single poorly done study that's since been exaggerated wildly and taken on a life of its own.
I've shared decorative statistics about care work plenty of times. I’ve used them to show how much care work is performed and its theoretical monetary value. I've used them to illustrate how much we're missing out on because of the way caregivers are exploited and the disabled are disempowered. I've argued for an adjustment to the GDP so the invisible labor that's so essential to society's functioning is counted. I've cited a lot of statistics, even as I considered these things largely impossible to measure.
How many family care workers are there? How much would their labor be worth if it were paid? How many professional care workers are there? How much does a country spend on eldercare? On care for the disabled? How much do family care workers lose out on income and benefits while providing unpaid care? These numbers are all estimates, some based on some pretty big guesses. Which is fine. That’s how statistics works in the world world. It's just all too easy to forget that they're guesses and start to take them seriously as undesputable fact, rather than a vauge estimate. The arguments I've tried to make, proving that care work is valuable based on its theoretical market value, are a lot more convincing if we can get people to take these numbers seriously.
Which is problematic, because statistics morph as they’re used. In the article, Ray Fisman explains:
“in the game of broken telephone that occurs when a quantitative estimate migrates into public discourse, numbers get rounded up, and then rounded up again. Estimates that originally take the form of a broad range get turned into a single number; estimates that concern a fairly narrow and specific domain are treated as if they apply much more broadly. Important caveats drop away. Sometimes researchers make a good-faith effort to measure a difficult-to-quantify phenomenon only to have a distorted version of their findings later presented as truth.”
Even if we had hard numbers on the value of unpaid care, I feel increasingly queasy about using them. I don't want my life, or anyone else's life, to be worth sustaining only for how we can contribute to GDP. I’m not sure it’s helpful to quantify everything, since so much is lost when we transform relationships into datapoints.
I resent the way more of our life is becoming quantifiable and monetized. Crashing with friends is now AirBnB. Driving a neighbor to the airport is now Uber. Checking in on a friend's pet is now Rover. I don’t blame the apps for this shift. These paid services aren't what disrupted relationships. Too many people were already pushed to the breaking point. People didn't have time for friends and they don't have the financial flexibility to do anything that isn't a side hustle. The apps didn’t create the void, they’re filling it.
When Eve Rodsky lists the amount of time each task of running a household takes in Fair Play, I find myself cringing. It makes me think of the way workers are given tiny amounts of time to complete tasks in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices. As soon as something is quantified, we're making it more efficient. The amount of time it takes to get someone dressed in the morning is not a stable number. To give someone a finite amount of time to perform care work is the fastest way to make everyone miserable. Good care, real care, is not efficient.
Of course, this is not what Rodsky is suggesting we do. She wants husbands to understand the invisible labor performed by wives and mothers, as step one to getting them to do their fair share. It was Lillian Gilbreth who brought the efficiency of the factory line into the home. Contrary to her marketing slogan, there is no such thing as ‘The One Best Way to Do Work.’ I hope that during Gilbreth's four years in a nursing home her caregivers were inefficient, didn’t do things only in The One Best Way, and took their time to do things the way they needed to be done in that moment for Gilbreth. I hope they were allowed to take their time. As Alice Wong wrote, “Care is not a checklist of tasks and responsibilities.”
Gilbreth didn’t just scrutinize workers, though. She aspired to design a world that made work easier. What does it say that Gilbreth's efficiently designed kitchens are nowhere to be found and the obsessive tracking of the efficiency of workers has become widespread? Sometimes we improve the process. More often we simply demand more of the worker. I’m not sure there’s a compelling economic argument to explain that.
In The Mansion of Happiness, Jill Lepore points out how:
“Housework used to be everyone’s work; industrialization made it merely women’s work. Coal-burning stoves meant that men didn’t have to cut, haul, and split wood; women still had to tend the stove. That stove saved a man work; it saved a woman nothing.” This trend has continued, as women’s household burden remains undiminished despite decades of advancement.”
In France they're protesting changes to the public pension plan. The reasons why this has people so upset go beyond two more years until retirement. It’s about the way workers are treated and the way work has been outsourced onto the users of public services. The systems are becoming more difficult to use, while more efficiency is demanded of the users these systems are supposed to serve. Jacobin quotes Sophie Lecointre, who works for the train system:
“Today, I’m at the control, so at the end of the customer’s journey. We are subjected to everything, all their anger, their rage, and I hear them, I understand them because I have lived through it, all these closures, all these changes. We didn’t want it, but our management said: “Yes, but it doesn’t work, there’s too much waiting, it’s easier to go and buy on the internet.” But no, actually. Nobody asked for this: it was imposed on us. It’s like all public services: in order to break them, they first say they are unworkable. But a public service must remain public; we’re not here to make money. And besides, where is our money? Where did it go? And now we are being asked to do two more years? I don’t agree.”
Who do these systems serve, if not their users?
Here's another earnest question, after reading an article concerend with the growing popularity of private pension plans in China. Why would the growth of private pensions be considered a judgement of the government? Isn't the ideal in the US to have a company pension, a 401k (or 403b, IRA, etc), and qualify for social security? Or the ideal would be to further diversify your investments with rental properties, royalties, and other sorts of passive income? Aren’t we taught that it’s unwise to put all your eggs in one basket?
If the goal is to reduce the risk of potential governmental and economic changes over the course of the decades until a young worker is planning on retiring, the growth of private pensions seems like a good thing. When we discuss the percentage of Americans with indivudual or company retirement plans we consider a high percentage preferable, not as a sign that everyone contributing to their pension has lost faith in the government. It's good when people are earning enough to make mandatory retirement contributions (like social security), pay all their bills, and then make voluntary retirement contributions (like a company pension, 401k, and IRA).
A quick search tells me China introduced a public pension system in 1951. If previous generations relied entirely on the public pension system it could be because saving for retirement was, like in the US, not a realistic option because of widespread poverty. One of the facts that's stuck with me from the Canadian citizenship exam was that 1951 was the first time the majority of Canadians could afford basic necessities. The first wave of seniors living off social security and the Canada pension plan payments didn't do that because it was part of their carefully thought out retirement plan. Government pensions hadn't existed for them to plan to rely on. They did it because they were poor.
When discussing poverty it's tempting to pull in statistics. I don't care how much money I earn, though. I bet you don't, either. When it comes down to it, what matters is how the days of our life feel. Today I didn’t worry about where I would sleep tomorrow or whether I could afford to see a doctor or if I’ll be unable to feed myself. I got to feel the sunshine on my face. I got to talk to my parents. I got to laugh with friends. I got to share a meal. I got to do work that felt meaningful. I felt like I'm part of something that matters: a family, a community, a project for all of us, an ecosystem. None of that needs to be quantified. That's what we're fighting for.
Over at Culture Study, Anne Helen Petersen is challenging people to join her in doing one community thing a month. I encourage you to give it a try. Start with something that seems easy. Don't worry if it's a little awkward or takes more than one try to work out.
Since we live in a world that revolves around data, here’s Care Data Matters.
The US's high poverty rate is not complicated.
“America has lost its ability to sit with the wrenchingly existential mysteries and daily upheaval of death, but by virtue of its boot-strap bullshit and colonial foundation—which necessarily denies humanity, community, and the full spectrum of our animal emotions—I don’t think it ever intended to sit with pain and loss begin with.”
AI doesn't live up to the hype, but it is good for journal prompts.
The exhaustion of needing help all the time, for decades.
The reason for medication shortages.
Terrible health insurance just seems inevitable now.
Regular, ordinary people in our daily life are our greatest sources of knowledge & inspiration.
People are super weird about waste elimination. You've already heard me go on and on about how austronauts are out there wearing diapers (or pooping in a fancy bag) and yet everyone still thinks it’s super cool and impressive to be an astronaut. Here's more proof that having someone assist you in the bathroom is fancy.
On Thursday the Center for Architecture is having David Gissen discuss his book, The Architecture of Disability Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access.
I learned, decades ago in banking & finance, that just because you can juggle the numbers, it doesn’t follow that you understand what they actually mean ‘on the ground’. Lots of numbers, precious little value. I love the term ‘decorative statistics’, thanks for introducing it to me.