The dynamics of social care and employment in mid-life

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between the provision of informal care to older parents/parents-in-law and the employment status of adult children in midlife. The study analyses unique panel data for a cohort of individuals born in  in Britain, focusing on respondents at risk of providing care (i.e. with at least one surviving parent/parent-in-law) and in employment at . Logistic regression is used to investigate the impact of caring at  and  on employment status at , controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, the respondent's health status and their partner's employment status. Separate models examine (a) the likelihood of exiting the labour force versus continuing work, and (b) amongst those continuing in work, the likelihood of reducing hours of employment. Different types of care (personal, basic and instrumental support) are distinguished, along with hours of caring. The results highlight that providing care for more personal tasks, and for a higher number of hours, are associated with exiting employment for both men and women carers. In contrast, the negative impact of more intense care-giving on reducing working hours was significant only for men -suggesting that women may juggle intensive care commitments alongside work or leave work altogether. Facilitating women and men to combine paid work and parental care in mid-life will be increasingly important in the context of rising longevity.

Informal care provision across multiple generations in China

“…The results further show that providing care to one generation increases the chance of providing care to another generation. These findings are highly consistent with those in developed countries (Fingerman et al , 2010; Grundy and Henretta, 2006; Gomez-Leon et al , 2017) which support the ‘solidarity hypothesis’ against the ‘competing demand hypothesis’, with helping one generation being linked with helping another generation. However, an increasing number of younger grandchildren may have a negative impact on the care provision to parents/parents-in-law, indicating somewhat competing explanations.…”

Caught in the middle in mid-life: provision of care across multiple generations

“…Our results also suggest that women who were working part-time or not at all were more likely to be dual care-givers, suggesting that women may find it more difficult to combine paid work with multiple care-giving than with caring for only one generation. Caring responsibilities for older parents affect the employment of mid-life individuals (Gomez-Leon et al , 2019) and may also have an indirect effect on their adult children's employment through limiting the provision of grandchild care (Dykstra and Fokkema, 2011).…”

Life course partnership and employment trajectories and parental caregiving at age 55: prospective findings from a British Birth Cohort Study

“…That provision of care to someone within the household increases the likelihood that carers will leave employment is well-known (Carr et al, 2016;Evandrou & Glaser, 2003), and that providing long hours of care or daily care is particularly associated with labour market exits (Ciccarelli & Van Soest, 2018;Gomez-Leon, Evandrou, Falkingham & Vlachantoni, 2017;Kelle, 2018;Walsh & Murphy, 2018), including through retirement (Jacobs, Van Houtven, Laporte & Coyte, 2017) or a reductions in hours (Ciccarelli & Van Soest, 2018). The type of care provided also matters, with the provision of personal care more strongly associated with exits from employment than other types of care provision, particularly for women (Gomez-Leon et al, 2017). This may be due to greater care demands involved in personal care, but also because personal care tasks have been shown to be more 'time-bound' and less shiftable than other forms of care (Hassink & Van den Berg, 2011;Van Houtven et al, 2013).…”

“…This may be due to greater care demands involved in personal care, but also because personal care tasks have been shown to be more 'time-bound' and less shiftable than other forms of care (Hassink & Van den Berg, 2011;Van Houtven et al, 2013). Some studies suggest that women are more likely than men to reduce work hours or exit labour market in response to caregiving (Carr et al, 2016;Ciccarelli & Van Soest, 2018) although others, in Australia and the UK, find that men and women are equally likely to leave employment in response to intense caregiving (Gomez-Leon et al, 2017;Nguyen & Connelly, 2014). In the US, employed women providing care have been shown to work fewer hours and received lower wages than non-caregiving female workers and the same was not true for men (Van Houtven et al, 2013).…”

“…A life course perspective requires consideration of the links between multiple temporal dimensions within lives, and, as has been seen with later life employment (Stafford et al, 2018), work and family life courses have implications for later life activities. While the impact of caregiving on subsequent, work, health and relationships has been explored previously (Carr et al, 2016;Ciccarelli & Van Soest, 2018;Gomez-Leon et al, 2017;Kelle, 2018;Walsh & Murphy, 2018), to our knowledge only one previous study has investigated the impact of employment on subsequent uptake of care provision. In Australia, full-time employment reduced the likelihood of taking up care responsibilities for men and women, although only for resident care (living with the care recipient) for men (Nguyen & Connelly, 2017).…”