IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvco/2021015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Blood and Gender Bias in Informal Care within the Family?

Author

Listed:
  • Canta, Chiara
  • Pestieau, Pierre

    (Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/CORE, Belgium)

  • Schoenmaeckers, Jérôme

Abstract

This paper deals with the question of the relative contribution of children to the informal long- term care of their dependent parents. Starting from a theoretical model and using SHARE data, the paper focuses on the role of gender and blood relationships as well as the effect of differential opportunity costs within the couple. The results tend to confirm the existence of gender and blood biases in the level of informal care provided, whereas the probability of providing any care is only affected by the blood bias. If children are working, their time devoted to informal care decreases with their wage. There is no difference in the level of care provided by single children and married children. Finally, when only couples are considered, gender and blood biases are confirmed but the wage ratio has no impact on the relative level of informal care of the spouses. These results have two main policy implications: tagging public LTC transfers on the gender of children, and the adjustment of public LTC transfers to different levels of insurance coverage.

Suggested Citation

  • Canta, Chiara & Pestieau, Pierre & Schoenmaeckers, Jérôme, 2021. "Blood and Gender Bias in Informal Care within the Family?," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2021015, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2021015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/boreal%3A253060/datastream/PDF_01/view
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Norton, E.C., 2016. "Health and Long-Term Care," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 951-989, Elsevier.
    2. Hanaoka, Chie & Norton, Edward C., 2008. "Informal and formal care for elderly persons: How adult children's characteristics affect the use of formal care in Japan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(6), pages 1002-1008, September.
    3. Alfonso Sousa-Poza & Hans Schmid & Rolf Widmer, 2001. "The allocation and value of time assigned to housework and child-care: An analysis for Switzerland," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 14(4), pages 599-618.
    4. Fuino, Michel & Wagner, Joël, 2020. "Duration of long-term care: Socio-economic factors, type of care interactions and evolution," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 151-168.
    5. Carmichael, Fiona & Charles, Susan, 2003. "The opportunity costs of informal care: does gender matter?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 781-803, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xavier Flawinne & Mathieu Lefebvre & Sergio Perelman & Pierre Pestieau & Jérôme Schoenmaeckers, 2023. "Nursing homes and mortality in Europe: Uncertain causality," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 134-154, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chiara Canta & Pierre Pestieau & Jérôme Schoenmaeckers, 2024. "Blood and gender bias in informal care within the family," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 595-631, June.
    2. Sugawara, Shinya & Nakamura, Jiro, 2014. "Can formal elderly care stimulate female labor supply? The Japanese experience," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 98-115.
    3. Michio Yuda & Jinkook Lee, 2016. "Effects of Informal Caregivers’ Health on Care Recipients," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 192-210, June.
    4. Yoko Niimi, 2018. "Does providing informal elderly care hasten retirement? Evidence from Japan," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 1039-1062, August.
    5. David C. Grabowski & Edward C. Norton & Courtney H. Van Houtven, 2012. "Informal Care," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 30, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Norton, E.C., 2016. "Health and Long-Term Care," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 951-989, Elsevier.
    7. Shinya Sugawara, 2022. "What composes desirable formal at-home elder care? An analysis for multiple service combinations," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 73(2), pages 373-402, April.
    8. Bauer, Jan Michael & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2015. "Impacts of Informal Caregiving on Caregiver Employment, Health, and Family," IZA Discussion Papers 8851, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Hu, Bo, 2020. "Trajectories of informal care intensity among the oldest-old Chinese," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    10. McDonald, Rebecca & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2018. "The Shadow Prices of Voluntary Caregiving: Using Panel Data of Well-Being to Estimate the Cost of Informal Care," IZA Discussion Papers 11545, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Olivia Ekert-Jaffé & Shoshana Grossbard, 2015. "Time Cost of Children as Parents' Foregone Leisure," Mathematical Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(2), pages 80-100, June.
    12. Norma B. Coe & Jing Guo & R. Tamara Konetzka & Courtney Harold Van Houtven, 2019. "What is the marginal benefit of payment‐induced family care? Impact on Medicaid spending and health of care recipients," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 678-692, May.
    13. Tsai, Yuping, 2015. "Social security income and the utilization of home care: Evidence from the social security notch," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 45-55.
    14. Bakx, Pieter & Wouterse, Bram & van Doorslaer, Eddy & Wong, Albert, 2020. "Better off at home? Effects of nursing home eligibility on costs, hospitalizations and survival," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    15. Noriko Morioka & Jun Tomio & Toshikazu Seto & Yoshie Yumoto & Yasuko Ogata & Yasuki Kobayashi, 2018. "Association between local-level resources for home care and home deaths: A nationwide spatial analysis in Japan," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-13, August.
    16. Stancanelli, Elena G. F. & Stratton, Leslie S., 2010. "Her Time, His Time, or the Maid's Time: An Analysis of the Demand for Domestic Work," IZA Discussion Papers 5253, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Heger, Dörte & Korfhage, Thorben, 2017. "Does the negative effect of caregiving on work persist over time?," Ruhr Economic Papers 703, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    18. Francisca Vargas Lopes & Pieter Bakx & Sam Harper & Bastian Ravesteijn & Tom Van Ourti, 2022. "The effects of supported housing for individuals with mental disorders," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(S2), pages 115-133, October.
    19. Sergi Jiménez-Martín & Cristina Prieto, 2012. "The trade-off between formal and informal care in Spain," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(4), pages 461-490, August.
    20. Costa-Font, Joan & Jiménez-Martín, Sergi & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2022. "Do Public Caregiving Subsidies and Supports affect the Provision of Care and Transfers?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Informal long-term care ; couple decision-making ; altruism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2021015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.