For manufacturers and service firms
alike, off-shoring has been an efficient way to lower costs. By outsourcing
work to foreign countries where labor costs are cheaper, companies can save
money and pass some of the savings to their customers.
For example, in the furniture industry, BusinessWeek1 reports that between 2000 and 2006,
imports nearly doubled from $17 billion to $30 billion. Most U.S. companies
now build furniture overseas, particularly in China, where costs are 25 percent
lower.
In the IT industry, companies are
increasingly off-shoring work to India. For example, IBM now employs 73,000
people in India, a 40 percent increase in the past year, and eight times the
Indian workforce it had as recently as 2003.
But it’s one thing to
outsource your call centers or your manufacturing to an overseas provider.
It’s quite another to off-shore a different type of labor — the type of labor
that results in the birth of your children.
And yet, this is just one of the new
markets that are emerging for people who want to off-shore personal services.
These high-end services include:
- Pregnancies
- Personal assistant
services
- Tutoring
In all, outsourced personal services are
expected to become a $2 billion industry by 2015, according to outsourcing
research firm Evalueserve.
Let’s start with off-shored pregnancies.
According to an Associated Press2 story, India legalized commercial surrogacy, or what some are calling “wombs
for rent,” in 2002. There are no statistics available on the number of
off-shored pregnancies, but doctors now routinely deliver such babies in every
major Indian city, and one prominent physician says that every month he is
contacted by several couples who want to hire surrogate mothers.
In a single clinic in the Indian city of
Anand, more than 50 women are now carrying babies for couples in the U.S. and
other countries. They have been impregnated in vitro with fertilized
eggs from the couples who hired them.
It’s a transaction that benefits both
sides. The surrogate mother earns a substantial income. ...
