Family bargaining and the gender gap in informal care

Chiara Canta () and Helmuth Cremer ()
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Chiara Canta: TBS - Toulouse Business School
Helmuth Cremer: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement

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Abstract: We study the optimal long-term care (LTC) policy when informal care can be provided by children in exchange for monetary transfers from their elderly parents. We consider a bargaining model with single-child families, where daughters have lower labor market wages, and bargaining power within the family varies by the child's gender. In the laissez-faire scenario, daughters always provide more informal care than sons. When their bargaining weight is smaller, they also experience lower welfare; however, this may be reversed if their bargaining weight is sufficiently high. The first-best outcome involves redistribution from families with sons to families with daughters and can be implemented through a gender-specific schedule of public LTC benefits and state-contingent transfers to adult children. Gender neutrality disadvantages families with daughters and may even leave daughters worse off than under laissez faire. It also leads to a distorted allocation of care within families with daughters and affects the distribution of transfers in all families.

Keywords: Informal care; Long-term care; Strategic bequests; Family bargaining; Gender-neutrality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
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Published in Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2026, 28 (4), pp.e70135. ⟨10.1111/jpet.70135⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05746561

DOI: 10.1111/jpet.70135

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