Labor force participation

Objective: Female caregivers often reduce time spent at work to care for aging family members, which precipitates financial hardship and other adverse outcomes. Little is known about psychosocial correlates of labor force participation (LFP) among female caregivers. The theory of planned behavior posits that social norms, attitudes, and perceived control predict intentions and volitional behaviors, but also that the compelling influence of situational variables undermines enactment of behaviors consistent with one’s intentions.

We evaluate a spillover effect of the Japanese public long-term care insurance (LTCI) as a policy to stimulate family caregivers’ labor force participation. Using nationally representative data from 1995 to 2013, we apply difference-in-difference propensity score matching to investigate the spillover effect in two periods: before and after the introduction of the LTCI in 2000 and before and after its major amendment in 2006.

Data were used from the 1991–2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey to examine the influence of informal care on labor market outcomes for married women of working aged, with emphasis on caregiving intensity. After accounting for potential endogeneity between caregiving and labor force participation (LFP) through simultaneous equations modeling, caregivers who provided more than 15 or 20 hr of caregiving per week were 4.5–7.7% less likely to be LFPs. Intensive caregivers who remained working had significantly lower (4.97–7.20) weekly hours of work.

Caregiving for family members is often described as a 36-hour day. Previous literature has suggested that family caregivers have little time to attend to their own health needs, such as participating in leisure-time physical activity. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we analyze whether time-allocation decisions reflect a conflict between time devoted to informal care and time devoted to self-health promotion through physical activity.