Unpaid Care for Elderly Parents and Labor Supply Among Older Working-Age Men and Women Across Europe

Summary, in English

With population aging, more adults across Europe face competing demands of working for pay and caring for elderly family members. Associated tradeoffs are expected to be negative,gendered and vary across contexts with different levels of gender equality, public support for eldercare, and work-family balance. Using SHARE data from 2004 to 2020, we investigated how unpaid caregiving to independently living parents relates to labor supply among mature working-age (50–64) men and women across Europe. We find limited tradeoffs between unpaid caregiving and labor supply, even where public support for eldercare is low. Caregiving associates with men’s and women’s employment and full-time work in similar ways. Gender differences nevertheless exist in both paid work and caregiving across Europe, especially in Continental and Southern Europe. These differences are established before midlife and build up across the life course and should be addressed when designing policies for longer working lives in Europe.

• Author: Elisa Labbas; Maria Stanfors
• Department/s: Historical labour markets; Department of Economic History; Centre for Economic Demography
• Publishing year: 2022
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Lund Papers in Economic Demography
• Issue: 2022:5
• Links: https://www.ed.lu.se/media/ed/papers/working_papers/LPED%202022%205.pdf
• Document type: Working paper
• Publisher: Centre for Economic Demography
• Topic: Economic History
• Keywords: Unpaid caregiving; labor supply; gender; Europe; SHARE; work-family balance
• Status: Published