Why Care? Social Norms, Relative Income and the Supply of Unpaid Care

Marina Della Giusta, Nigar Hashimzade and Sarah Jewell

No em-dp2011-03, Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading

Abstract: We focus on the role of conformity with social norms and concern with relative income in the decision to supply unpaid care for parents. Individuals have different propensities to be influenced by both relative income and social norms, and face a time constraint on the provision of both paid work (which increases their income) and unpaid care. We estimate our model with a sample drawn from the British Household Panel Survey to assess these effects empirically, estimating both the supply of unpaid care and the effect on utility of different preferences for relative income and unpaid care. We find that providing care decreases individual utility: long care hours are bad for carers (and care recipients). Women feature disproportionately amongst care providers and their motivations for care provision differ to men's, both in respect to the importance attached to relative income and to conformity with social norms. After controlling for other factors, men are more envious than women (attach more weight to relative income) and indiÄŠerent to social norms in relation to caring, whereas the opposite holds for women, so status races are bad for the supply of care within families and particularly men's supply. This is an issue as caring (in right amounts) can be good for carers too if they agree with caring norms, even when they prefer paid work to caring (as men do). We discuss implications for care provision and working arrangements.

Keywords: care; unpaid work; social norms; relative income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D13 J22 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2011-07-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-evo, nep-lab, nep-lma, nep-ltv and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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