Every 8 Seconds, an American Turns 65. How Do We Care for Everyone?
About this episode
Ai-jen Poo makes the case for treating care as public infrastructure. With an American turning 65 every eight seconds, families are buckling under care costs while the 2.5 million domestic workers who provide child care, elder care, and disability support remain underpaid and unprotected. Poo recounts her path from organizing nannies and housekeepers after 9/11 to founding Domestic Workers United and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and her alliance with disability-rights activists in Caring Across Generations. She argues that care work — disproportionately done by women of color and immigrants — is skilled, essential labor that has been devalued precisely because it was once unpaid women's work. The conversation covers the Build Back Better care proposals (child care, universal pre-K, home- and community-based services), her grandfather's story, and a vision of universal family care with real labor standards.