TY - JOUR T1 - The effect of informal care on work and wages JF - Journal of health economics Y1 - 2013 A1 - Courtney Harold Van Houtven A1 - Norma B Coe A1 - Meghan M. Skira KW - Demographics KW - Employment and Labor Force KW - Healthcare KW - Income KW - Medicare/Medicaid/Health Insurance AB - Cross-sectional evidence in the United States finds that informal caregivers have less attachment to the labor force. The causal mechanism is unclear: do children who work less become informal caregivers, or are children who become caregivers working less? Using longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, we identify the relationship between informal care and work in the United States, both on the intensive and extensive margins, and examine wage effects. We control for time-invariant individual heterogeneity; rule out or control for endogeneity; examine effects for men and women separately; and analyze heterogeneous effects by task and intensity. We find modest decreases-2.4 percentage points-in the likelihood of working for male caregivers providing personal care. Female chore caregivers, meanwhile, are more likely to be retired. For female care providers who remain working, we find evidence that they decrease work by 3-10hours per week and face a 3 percent lower wage than non-caregivers. We find little effect of caregiving on working men's hours or wages. These estimates suggest that the opportunity costs to informal care providers are important to consider when making policy recommendations about the design and funding of public long-term care programs. PB - 32 VL - 32 IS - 1 U4 - Informal care/Caregivers/Labor force participation/Labor economics/Labor supply/Compensation and benefits/Working hours/wage rates/Long-term care of the sick/gender Differences ER - TY - THES T1 - Essays on informal care, labor supply and wages T2 - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Y1 - 2012 A1 - Meghan M. Skira KW - Adult children KW - Employment and Labor Force KW - Healthcare KW - Methodology KW - Public Policy AB - This dissertation examines how caregiving for an elderly parent affects an adult child's labor supply and wages. In the first chapter (co-authored with Courtney H. Van Houtven and Norma B. Coe) we identify the relationship between informal care and labor force participation in the United States, both on the intensive and extensive margins, and examine wage effects. We control for time-invariant individual heterogeneity; rule out or control for endogeneity; examine effects for men and women separately; and analyze heterogeneous effects by task and intensity. We find modest decreases--1.4-2.4 percentage points--in the likelihood of working for caregivers providing personal care. Male and female chore caregivers, meanwhile, are more likely to retire. For female care providers who remain working, we find evidence that they decrease work by 3-10 hours per week and face a 2.3-2.6 percent wage penalty. We find little effect of caregiving on working men's hours or wages except for a wage premium for male intensive caregivers. In the second chapter I formulate and estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of elder parent care and work to analyze how caregiving affects a woman's current and future labor force participation and wages. Intertemporal tradeoffs, such as decreased future earning capacity due to a current reduction in labor market work, are central to the decision to provide care. The existing literature, however, overlooks such long-term considerations. I depart from the previous literature by modeling caregiving and work decisions in an explicitly intertemporal framework. The model incorporates dynamic elements such as the health of the elderly parent, human capital accumulation and job offer availability. I estimate the model on a sample of women from the Health and Retirement Study by efficient method of moments. The estimates indicate that intertemporal tradeoffs matter considerably. In particular, women face low probabilities of returning to work or increasing work hours after a caregiving spell. Using the estimates, I simulate several government sponsored elder care policy experiments: a longer unpaid leave than currently available under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993; a paid work leave; and a caregiver allowance. The leaves encourage more work among intensive care providers since they guarantee a woman can return to her job, while the caregiver allowance discourages work. A comparison of the welfare gains generated by the policies shows that half the value of the paid leave can be achieved with the unpaid leave, and the caregiver allowance generates gains comparable to the unpaid leave. JF - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences PB - Boston College CY - Boston, MA VL - Ph.D. UR - https://dlib.bc.edu/islandora/object/bc-ir:101322/datastream/PDF/view U4 - labor force participation ER -