Jeffrey Neilson and Co-Authors Examine the Time Costs of Unpaid Caregiving in Cross-National Study
Posted: 11/25/2019 (CSDE Research)
CSDE visiting scholar Jeffrey Neilson, from Lund University (Sweden), co-authored a recent article that examined the time costs of unpaid caregiving across three distinct policy contexts.
The article appears in SSM – Population Health Issue 9 and the authors present results analyzing time use survey data from Sweden, the UK, and Canada from 2000 to 2015. Among a sample of men and women aged 50-74, they analyze how caregiving time is traded off against time in paid work and leisure. Their results illustrate how women provide more unpaid care in each country, but the impact of caregiving time on labor supply is similar for both men and women. Caregivers reduce time in paid work to provide caregiving to a greater extent in the UK and Canada, than they do in Sweden, while caregivers in Sweden reduce their leisure time. The study highlights how caregivers make labor and leisure tradeoffs and supports the idea that context may mitigate the labor market effects of unpaid care. The full article is linked below.