Unpaid Caregiving and Labor Force Participation among Chinese Middle-Aged Adults

Abstract

Unpaid family caregivers must consider the economic trade-off between caregiving and paid employment. Prior literature has suggested that labor force participation (LFP) declines with caregiving intensity, but no study has evaluated this relationship by accounting for the presence of both kinks and discontinuities. Here we used respondents of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study baseline survey who were nonfarming, of working age (aged 45–60) and had a young grandchild and/or a parent/parent-in-law. For women and men separately, a caregiving threshold-adjusted probit model was used to assess the association between LFP and weekly unpaid caregiving hours. Instrumental variables were used to rule out the endogeneity of caregiving hours. Of the 3718 respondents in the analysis, LFP for men was significantly and inversely associated with caregiving that involved neither discontinuities nor kinks. For women, a kink was identified at the caregiving threshold of eight hrs/w such that before eight hours, each caregiving hour was associated with an increase of 0.0257 in the marginal probability of LFP, but each hour thereafter was associated with a reduction of 0.0014 in the marginal probability of LFP. These results have implications for interventions that simultaneously advance policies of health, social care and labor force.

Inferring causality from observational studies: the role of instrumental variable analysis

“…The second-stage regression was a threshold-adjusted Cox proportional hazards model that predicted the mortality hazard using the predicted dialysis duration from the firststage regression and the same set of covariates. 8,31,32 Detailed descriptions of this model are discussed in Supplementary Appendix G. A 1-stage threshold-adjusted Cox proportional hazards model was also estimated to compare the results with the IV analysis.…”

How Do Middle-Aged Chinese Men and Women Balance Caregiving and Employment Income?

“…We assessed individuals' weekly hours of unpaid caregiving offered to grandchildren under the age 16 and/or parents/parents-in-law over the past year as the main independent variable. The CHARLS has used the age 16 to define grandchildren that are likely to depend on the care of grandparents, while the care provided to those above 16 was not measured [35,37,38]. Care work was defined to be any assistance in daily activities (ADLs) or other activities, including but not limited to household chores, meal preparation, laundry, going out, grocery shopping and financial management [38].…”

Men who care too much do not work: a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of unpaid caregiving by men on their labour market participation

“…European-based studies comprised half of all studies (n=14), followed by seven studies using data from North America, another seven conducted in Asia, and three in Oceania (Australia). Only three studies were based in a LMIC, including two from China 45,46 and one from Indonesia 47 . Sample sizes of men ranged from 265 to 768,125.…”

“…60 Four studies accessed the effect of caregiving hours on men's LFP. 45,54,63,64 The random-effects model (Figure 5) found each hourly increase in caregiving to be associated with an insigni cant 0.2-percentage-point decrease in LFP (95% CI: -0.0004 to 0.001, p-value=0.106). The level of heterogeneity was relatively low (I 2 =31.1%) and no publication bias was detected (p-value=0.813).…”