Aranco, Natalia (2026). Unpaid Caregiving in Latin America and the Caribbean: Tables and Annexes. IDB Open Data. https://doi.org/10.60966/9qwcytuc

1. English

What is this dataset?

It publishes the tables, figures and annexes behind the IDB study "Unpaid Caregiving of Children, Persons with Disabilities and Older People in Latin America and the Caribbean: Key Numbers and Trends". It is the underlying evidence for that study, not the study itself.

What does it measure?

The weekly hours of direct unpaid care provided in each country, the number of people providing it, the average hours each caregiver contributes, the share of the care provided by women, and the value of that care expressed as a share of GDP under the opportunity-cost and replacement-cost methods.

What does it contain?

Four tables. Country estimates hold the headline figures for every country and robustness scenario. Country profiles hold the full indicator set for each surveyed country, split by caregiver sex. Survey coverage records how each national survey was designed and which care activities it captures. Caregiver projections carry the number of caregivers forward in time. The complete workbook and the annex document are also available for download.

Which countries are included?

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay have their own survey data. Regional totals also cover The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela, whose figures are extrapolated from countries with comparable surveys.

What time period does it cover?

The surveys were fielded between 2016 and 2024, and the estimates are anchored to a 2023 reference year. Projections of the number of caregivers extend to 2035 and 2050.

How was the data collected?

From national time-use surveys, which ask respondents how they spent their time over a reference period. Brazil is the exception: its Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) identifies caregivers but does not collect time use, so its hours are imputed. Population figures and projections come from the United Nations Population Division.

What are its limitations?

The surveys are not fully harmonized. They differ in the ages used to define children and older people, in whether care given to people outside the household is counted, and in how care activities are grouped, so cross-country comparisons should be read alongside the survey coverage table. Brazil collects no time-use data and is therefore absent from the time-use indicators. Countries without a comparable survey carry extrapolated rather than observed values. Because one person can care for more than one type of recipient, totals do not equal the sum across recipient types.

How can it be used?

To size the unpaid care economy against GDP, to compare the gender distribution of care across countries, to anticipate how demand for care shifts as populations age, and to test how sensitive any of those findings are to the assumptions behind them.

In what format is it available?

The four derived tables are queryable through the data portal and downloadable as CSV. The source workbook is available as an Excel file and the annexes as a Word document.

Under what licence is it published?

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt the material, including commercially, provided you give appropriate credit.

How do I cite it?

Use the citation shown on this page, which names the author, the year, the title, IDB Open Data as the publisher, and the dataset's DOI.