Profiling caregivers: caregiving workload, mobility, stress, and remote work difficulties 

When we think about moving through a city, either commuting, running errands, or picking up groceries, we rarely stop to consider just how much of that movement is tied to care. Whether it’s taking your child to daycare, dropping off medicine for a grandparent, or checking in on a neighbour, these acts of care are everywhere in our daily routines.  

Traditionally, transport research relies on origin-destination surveys or time-use diaries. These tools are useful, but they miss a lot of the complexity in care-related mobility. They often don’t capture the relational and emotional weight of caregiving, the diversity of tasks involved, or the ways gender, income, and access to digital tools shape how people move (or can’t move). 

Our research focused on caregivers in Chile, a country where almost 90% of people live in urban areas. We surveyed residents in Santiago, Concepción, and other cities, asking about their caregiving tasks and how these changed from just before the pandemic to the early response phase. The aim? To go beyond basic trip counts and dig into the real lived experience of care mobility. While many people were adapting to remote work and limited travel, caregivers were often forced to continue moving—bringing groceries to parents, taking children to health appointments, or simply trying to juggle household tasks with paid work. We wanted to understand these challenges in more detail and highlight the factors that shaped them. Understanding how caregivers navigate cities means looking beyond destinations to consider whom they care for, the resources they have, and the social roles they are expected to play. 

We found four distinct profiles of caregivers. On one end, there are high-income households where caregiving duties are shared fairly equally between partners. These folks had access to good internet, flexible jobs, and lived in areas with services nearby. Unsurprisingly, they reported lower stress and found it easier to work from home. On the other end of the spectrum were caregivers with fewer resources, often managing everything on their own. Many cared for young children or people with special needs, had lower incomes, lived in overcrowded housing, and lacked good internet connections. For them, stress levels were high, mobility was restricted, and balancing paid work from home felt nearly impossible. 

The study also confirmed what many women already know from experience: caregiving remains a deeply gendered issue. Even after accounting for income, education, and other factors, women consistently reported more stress and greater difficulty navigating caregiving and remote work. This isn’t unique to Chile, since similar patterns have been found in the UK, France, and the Netherlands. 

Digital exclusion also played a big role. Without reliable internet, remote work simply didn’t work. This added another layer of inequality, especially in low-income neighborhoods or smaller cities. In places like Washington state, faster internet access helped support remote work. In Chile, the opposite was true—those without connectivity were left behind. 

All of this matters because urban policy should move beyond movement analyses from point A to point B. Mobility is relational. It’s about who you’re with, who you’re responsible for, and what options you have. And if cities are going to become more equitable, they need to recognize and support caregiving as a vital part of urban life. 

So what can be done? We need better data that actually reflects the complexity of care. We need policies that reduce the burden on low-resource caregivers, like improving access to local services, investing in digital infrastructure, and making cities more walkable and connected. 

Caregivers keep our cities running. It’s time transport and urban policy started running with them in mind.