Sharing the Caring? The Gender Division of Care Work during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany

Jonas Jessen, Katharina Spiess (), Sevrin Waights and Katharina Wrohlich
Additional contact information
Sevrin Waights: Humboldt University Berlin

No 14457, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic and related closures of daycare centers and schools significantly increased the amount of care work done by parents. There is much speculation over whether the pandemic increased or decreased gender equality in parental care work. Based on representative data for Germany we present an empirical analysis that shows greater support for the latter rather than the former hypothesis. A key finding is that there is a significant increase in the number of couples where the mother is left completely or almost completely alone with the care work. We see only small increases in the prevalence of fathers doing more than mothers or in splitting these tasks 50:50. Additionally we find that the increase in mothers solely responsible for care work is greatest when the mother alone works from home. The division of care work is perceived very differently by mothers and fathers, a difference that also increased during the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; child care; domestic work; gender division; day care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-gen and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published - revised version published as 'The gender division of unpaid care work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany' in: German Economic Review , 2022, 23(4), 641-667

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14457.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp14457

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().