Population aging is likely to lead to an increase in the number of people in need of assistance. It is well known that a large part of this assistance originates, and will continue to originate, from the network of relatives and friends. However, the effects of the provision of care on individuals' employment trajectories when this care is combined with employment of varying intensity or with childcare responsibilities have rarely been examined. The present study used proportional hazards models with the General Social Survey, Cycles 20 and 21, to assess the impact of providing care to a partner, a parent or parent-in-law, another relative, or a non-relative on the risk of leaving employment. The analyses show that providing care to a parent or parent-in-law increases the probability of leaving employment only among women employed full-time and among men and women who have no children or only adult children.
In this study, the caregiving history collected in the 2007 General Social Survey (GSS) is used to document the provision of care since the age of 15 years, the number of people helped, and the relationship with the care recipients. Using life tables, we confirm an upward trend in caregiving across birth cohorts. Unexpectedly, the findings also show that providing care starts at earlier ages in more recent cohorts-a result that appears partly linked to the emergence of new care relationships-and that the gender gap in the provision of care has widened over time.
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