Does Informal Eldercare Impede Women's Employment? The Case of European Welfare States

Andreas Kotsadam

Feminist Economics, 2011, vol. 17, issue 2, 121-144

Abstract: European states vary in eldercare policies and in gendered norms of family care, and this study uses these variations to gain insight into the importance of macro-level factors for the work-care relationship. Using advanced panel data methods on European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data for 1994-2001, this study finds women's employment to be negatively associated with informal caregiving to the elderly across the European Union. For the countries included in the study, the effects of informal caregiving seem to be more negative in Southern Europe, less negative in Nordic countries, and in between these extremes in Central Europe. This study explains that since eldercare is a choice in countries with more formal care and less pronounced gendered care norms, the weaker impact of eldercare on women's employment in these countries has to do with the lesser degree of coercion in the caring decision.

Keywords: Informal care; female labor supply; European welfare states (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13545701.2010.543384 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:femeco:v:17:y:2011:i:2:p:121-144

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2010.543384

Access Statistics for this article

Feminist Economics is currently edited by Diana Strassmann

More articles in Feminist Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().