Gender, work, and attitudes
- Författare
- Kotsadam, A.
- Titel
- Gender, work, and attitudes
- Utgivningsår
- 2011
- Stad
- Göteborg
- Utgivare
- Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law
- Universitet
- University of Gothenburg
- Sammanfattning
The thesis consists of four self-contained papers. Paper 3: Does informal eldercare impede women's employment? The case of European welfare states (Forthcoming in Feminist Economics) 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, this study finds women's employment to be negatively associated with informal caregiving to the elderly across the European Union. The effects of informal caregiving seem to be more negative in the Southern European countries, less negative in the Nordic countries, and in between these extremes in the Central European countries included in the study. 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 degree of degree of coercion in the caring decision. Paper 4: The employment costs of caregiving in Norway Informal eldercare is an important pillar of modern welfare states and the ongoing demographic transition increases the demand for it while social trends reduce the supply. Substantial opportunity costs of informal eldercare in terms of forgone labor opportunities have been identified, yet the effects seem to differ substantially across states and there is a controversy on the effects in the Nordic welfare states. In this study, the effects of informal care on the probability of being employed, the number of hours worked, and wages in Norway are analyzed using data from the Life cOurse, Generation, and Gender (LOGG) survey. New and previously suggested instrumental variables are used to control for the potential endogeneity existing between informal care and employment-related outcomes. In total, being an informal caregiver in Norway is found to entail substantially less costs in terms of forgone formal employment opportunities than in non-Nordic welfare states.