There are ideas that not only change the way we think, but also the way we live.
Among all the research carried out by CENIE, few embody so clearly the social transformation that accompanies long-lived societies as The Economy of Care.
This project, led by economists Ignacio Álvarez Peralta (Autonomous University of Madrid) and Jorge Uxó González (Complutense University of Madrid), has become in 2025 an international reference on how to modernize the Welfare State and incorporate a new structural pillar: the Right to Care.
The research begins from a shared conviction: a long-lived society cannot be sustained without a solid, equitable, and dignified care network. Caring is not a private act; it is a public good, a human right, and a strategic investment for the future.
The challenge of our time
During the 20th century, Welfare States were built upon three major pillars — health, education, and pensions — which guaranteed security and progress.
But that model was born in a shorter time, in a younger society. Today, when life expectancy exceeds 83 years in Spain and 81 in Portugal, that architecture is no longer enough.
CENIE’s project shows that longevity without care is an empty promise.
Spain invests barely 0.75% of GDP in long-term care, half the OECD average, and this generates deep inequalities: overburdened women, neglected men, invisible jobs, family dependency.
Modernizing welfare means recognizing that caring, receiving care, and being able to reconcile are rights, not privileges.
As the research team states: “If the Welfare State was born to reduce inequalities, the Right to Care is the missing piece to complete it.”
The team behind it
The study brings together an exceptional group of specialists who represent a plural and committed perspective. In addition to the lead researchers Álvarez Peralta and Uxó González, the team includes Ricardo Molero Simarro (UAM), Elia Gómez Castro (Agency of Social Services and Dependency of Andalusia), Laura Pérez Ortiz (UAM), Raúl del Pozo Rubio (UCLM), Fernando Bermejo Patón (UCLM), and Paloma Villanueva Cortés (UCM).
An interdisciplinary team combining applied economics, social analysis, public policy, gender, and economic evaluation, with a common goal: to measure and demonstrate that investing in care is economically and socially profitable.
Measuring the invisible
One of the project’s most powerful contributions is its work on quantifying the invisible: that universe of unpaid tasks that sustain everyday life.
According to estimates by Paloma Villanueva, more than 1.6 million people provide informal care in Spain, performing around 125 million hours of work per week.
Translated into economic value, that effort would amount to nearly 8% of national GDP.
This reality raises an unavoidable question: how can a country sustain its welfare while ignoring the foundation on which it is built?
The project responds with data and proposals: to recognize, professionalize, and dignify care. Formalizing part of this work would generate stable employment, fiscal revenues, and greater gender equity.
Caring does not impoverish a country; it enriches it.
The care gap
The research, with contributions from Ricardo Molero Simarro, has precisely defined the so-called care gap or gap of insufficient care.
In Spain, two out of three dependent people do not receive adequate support from the public system.
Of those who do, one in four considers the help insufficient.
The gap is twofold: absolute, for those who receive no care at all, and relative, for those who receive it with less intensity or quality.
The study shows that older men suffer more deficiencies in formal care, while women bear the overload of informal care.
Both sides of inequality are part of the same problem: the absence of a universal long-term care system.
Caring is also working
Economist Laura Pérez Ortiz has documented the labor precariousness of the sector: 84% women, 22% migrant workers, and up to 36% undeclared employment.
Long working hours, low wages, and physical and emotional risks are the reverse side of a job essential to society.
Professionalizing care — improving working conditions, guaranteeing training, rights, and career paths — is not only social justice: it is smart state policy, generating non-relocatable jobs and high social returns.
From evidence to impact
The team has developed a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) that will allow estimating the economic impact of the new economy of care: production, employment, income, and fiscal returns.
This model — based on Input-Output methodology — will measure how each euro invested in care multiplies throughout the economy, generating growth and cohesion.
The advances of 2025 point to a promising finding: for every euro allocated to care, society recovers more than one in welfare, employment, and revenue.
For the first time, care is analyzed not as an expense, but as a strategic investment, as structural as physical infrastructure or technological innovation.
A cultural and political change
The Economy of Care project is not limited to numbers.
It is also a manifesto about dignity, interdependence, and the meaning of progress.
It asserts that welfare is not measured only in terms of GDP or productivity, but in a society’s ability to care well for its members.
That is why this work becomes one of CENIE’s Highlights of the Year: because it proposes a renewal of the social contract in the era of longevity.
Because it offers a concrete roadmap to transform care into a right, equity into public policy, and long life into good life.
Longevity will only be sustainable if care ceases to be invisible.