Family Caregiving and Work-Related Conflicts

By Richard Shank Family Caregiving

A new economic study conducted by researchers in Europe demonstrates that caring for elderly loved ones has a significant impact on the labor-market opportunities for caregivers. They also find that the impact on employment varies between countries depending upon the policies that are in place to help workers balance their work and family obligations.

The stress created by the conflicting demands of home and work has been a troubling problem for some time, and this stress can be expected to increase if the current prevailing conditions continue into the future—especially in the U.S. where federal and state guidelines are negligible. This study utilized data from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which is designed to forecast the impact of an aging population on work and home life. Primarily, these researchers are interested in the association between the hours of informal care provided, the probability of employment, the number of hours worked, and the wages earned by employed caregivers.

The demand for informal care is likely to increase because of the ongoing age demographic transition towards a higher percentage of older adults in the population. In order to increase the supply of informal care providers, researchers stressed the importance of outlining the incentives of caregiving for employees.

The incentives that were identified constitute a wide variety of benefits and associated costs. Benefits of informal caring relationships include the fulfillment of interpersonal obligations, increases in interpersonal trust, and improved relationships. However, these caregiving relationships come with both direct and indirect costs. From the perspective of an employed caregiver, every hour of care is one less hour of paid labor. More indirectly, these costs adversely affect employment because time away from the job impacts the number of workplace opportunities available to the employee.

This study demonstrates that the indirect costs (e.g. missing or turning down a promotion) can be managed at the level of public policy. This type of cost was shown to differ from country to country. For example, hours of labor are more negatively impacted by caregiving duties in central European countries than in countries in southern Europe. The researchers attribute this fact to a southern European public policy that creates the conditions for a more flexible workplace that offers incentives for employees to provide both care for their loved ones and invest more time on the job.

Furthermore, this research suggests that workplace policies which seek to minimize the disruptions of caregiving has a positive impact on the labor-market potential of employees. Furthermore,these policies can offer the type of incentives that will allow countries to meet the growing demand for eldercare with minimal disruption within the workplace.

Source; Bolin, K. Lingren. B. and Lundborg,P. 2008. Your next of kin or your own career? Caring and working among the 50+ of Europe. Journal of Health Economics 27: 718-738.

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