Keywords

1 Key messages

At the beginning of the pandemic, more people, especially women, temporarily provided care. Thus, during the first wave of the pandemic, more people from the working-age population were engaged in caregiving. In the second pandemic wave, participation in care tasks was as high as it had been before the pandemic.

Even during the pandemic, women spent more time on care tasks than men. The amount of time spent on care did not change significantly during the pandemic. Non-employed women spent the greatest amount of time providing care; this could be due to their greater time availability or could also be an indication of the incompatibility of highly time-intensive care and employment.

The employment rate of care-givers remained stable during the pandemic. This applied both to care-givers who provided low-intensity care and to those who provided high-intensity care. In general, high-intensity care-givers had the highest reconciliation conflicts. This was expressed in a significantly lower employment rate. During the pandemic, the employment rate of high-intensity care-givers was particularly low.

Policy packages to better reconcile care and work were hardly used. Only one per cent each of care-givers used the option to take short-term absence from work (Kurzzeitige Arbeitsverhinderung) or care leave (Pflegezeit) to care for family members.

On average, care-givers were more burdened during the pandemic. Both before and during the pandemic, high-intensity care-givers felt more burdened than low-intensity care-givers. In the winter of 2020/21, non-employed women who provided high-intensity care felt the greatest care-giver burden, followed by women who combined employment with high-intensity care.

2 Introduction

The exponential spread of the Covid-19 virus during the first pandemic wave at the beginning of 2020 and the associated political measures to contain the virus forced many individuals who provided support and care for their family members, neighbours or friends to reorganise their activities. For example, family members may have had to stop providing support with household tasks such as cleaning, cooking, or washing up for vulnerable groups at short notice for reasons of pandemic containment, or they may have had to take on new tasks because professional care services were no longer available (Eggert et al. 2020). Family-and-friend care-givers may also have experienced supply bottlenecks due to temporary closures of outpatient care services or pandemic-related leave of paid 24-h migrant home care workers (so-called foreign “live-ins”) (Eggert et al. 2020; Wolf-Ostermann et al. 2020).Footnote 1 In addition, many care homes paused new admissions to protect residents and staff from infections, which is why caregiving family members could not turn to inpatient facilities when their relatives’ care needs increased (Eggert and Teubner 2021; Rothgang et al. 2020).Footnote 2 After the summer of 2020, when there were relatively low infection numbers, many measures from the first pandemic wave such as contact restrictions, were reimposed with the December lockdown in winter 2020. In addition, the soaring infection figures in December 2020 may have again meant that family-and-friend care-givers did not include further informal and formal care-givers in care provision because they were considered too risky (Brandt et al. 2021).

Against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated measures, the question is how the situation of caregiving individuals working age developed. Specifically, the study examined how working-age care-givers’ care and employment situations developed over the course of the pandemic. Previous results from the first wave of the pandemic showed that the proportion of care-givers, especially among women, increased (see chapter “Covid-19 crisis = care crisis? Changes in care provision and care-givers’ well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic”). This pattern was likely also evident for people of working age (up to 64 years), as a large proportion of care is provided by people of working age (Ehrlich 2019). Furthermore, the amount of time spent on care tasks likely increased during the pandemic. However, employed persons may not have increased their time commitment to care tasks to the same extent as non-employed people due to the time restrictions imposed by their working lives. The difficulties that already existed in pre-pandemic times in reconciling family care and gainful employment (Kelle 2020; Ehrlich et al. 2020) may also have been exacerbated by supply bottlenecks during the pandemic and may have led to family care-givers giving up or reducing their gainful employment. On the other hand, reduced working hours or work-from-home arrangements among employed persons may have led to them having more time or being able to use time more flexibly to take up or expand necessary care activities than before the pandemic.

To help people avoid work-family reconciliation conflicts during the pandemic, the German federal government simplified access to statutory measures such as (family) care leave (Familienpflegezeit and Pflegezeit), which legally allows employees to reduce or to interrupt their paid work to perform caregiving activities with the “Second Law for the Protection of the Population in the Event of an Epidemic of National Significance” (Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth 2020). These options may therefore have been particularly attractive during the pandemic, since a quarter of care-givers reported a need for informal and formal support (see chapter “Covid-19 crisis = care crisis? Changes in care provision and care-givers’ well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic”).

Regardless of whether care-givers availed of such measures, the Covid-19 pandemic was a stressful situation for family care-givers (see Brandt et al. 2021; Budnick et al. 2021; chapter “Covid-19 crisis = care crisis? Changes in care provision and care-givers’ well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic”). Since persons in need of assistance or care were considered particularly at risk of infection, family care-givers had to protect themselves from infection to a much greater extent to avoid passing on the virus to their care recipients and jeopardising their role as care-givers. Protection against infection was best achieved through strict social isolation. For the most part, employed care-givers could not implement social distancing measures, but non-employed care-givers may have been able to isolate themselves better. Therefore, employed care-givers may have been exposed to higher stress and impairment than non-employed care-givers. Furthermore, employed care-givers faced a “double burden” of work and family, which did not exist for non-employed care-givers. On the other hand, gainful employment may have been perceived as a relief from the burden of caring, which non-working care-givers did not have (Glauber and Day 2018; Moen et al. 1995). The analyses presented here mainly focus on the situation of working-age care-givers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout this chapter, the terms “care” and “care-giver” are used to refer to the various tasks that persons provide to family members, friends or neighbours suffering from poor health, disability or old-age related frailty—often without pay. Unpaid family-and-friend care may encompass at least one of the various activities: personal care (e.g. toileting, dressing or feeding), household tasks (e.g. shopping, cleaning or cooking), supervising or looking after the person in need of care, medical-related or nursing tasks or emotional support (Ehrlich et al. 2020).

The literature indicates that there were pre-pandemic gender differences in assuming a care-giver role, in the time spent on caregiving (Ehrlich 2019; Klaus and Vogel 2019), in reconciliation strategies (Auth et al. 2016; Carr et al. 2018; Ehrlich 2019) and in mental and physical health consequences in response to caregiving (Pinquart and Sörensen 2006). It is therefore important to ask whether these gender differences remained constant during the pandemic or whether they converged. These gender differences may even have increased, and there may have been a corresponding retraditionalisation of gender roles in the area of support and care provided to family members, friends or neighbours, as has already been observed in the area of childcare and household labour (e.g. Möhring et al. 2020; Kohlrausch and Zucco 2020; Huebener et al. 2021; Hipp and Bünning 2021).

The chapter seeks to address the following questions:

  1. 1)

    Were more or fewer employed and non-employed people involved in caregiving tasks during the Covid-19 pandemic than before the Covid-19 pandemic? Were there differences between women and men?

  2. 2)

    How did the amount of time spent on care by employed and non-employed care-givers develop during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic? Were there any gender differences?

  3. 3)

    How did care-givers’ involvement in paid work develop during the Covid-19 pandemic compared to before the pandemic, and were there different trends for women and men?

  4. 4)

    How high was the share of employed care-givers who made use of statutory leave options to better reconcile care and employment during the pandemic?

  5. 5)

    How did the care-giver burden of employed and non-employed care-givers change during the Covid-19 pandemic? Were there any differences between women and men?

3 Data and Methods

To answer the research questions, we used the data of the German Ageing Survey (DEAS) from the in-person survey in 2017, the written short survey in summer 2020 and the telephone survey in winter 2020/21. We examined the changes in the situation of working-age care-givers between the survey dates. Through this approach, we hoped to obtain indications of how the situation of family-and-friend care-givers of working age developed during the Covid-19 pandemic compared to before the pandemic. However, observed changes may also be a consequence of general societal changes or other historical events between 2017 and 2021. This must be considered when interpreting the findings.

For all the time points surveyed, we narrowed the sample down to respondents aged between 46 and 65 at the time of the interview, meaning they were of working age: 2900 (2017), 1649 (2020) and 2240 (2020/21). Our analyses were therefore based on information from respondents who were interviewed either at all three survey time points (62 per cent), at two survey time points (27 per cent) or at only one survey time point (eleven per cent).

The information reported here was collected by means of the following questions:

Care-givers: In the German Ageing Survey, care-givers were identified via the following question: “In the last 12 months (2017, 2020/21)/in the last 3 months (2020), were there people you looked after or cared for regularly due to their poor state of health, either on a private or voluntary basis?”. Respondents who answered “yes” to this question were described as care-givers.Footnote 3

Time devoted to care: Following the care question, care-givers were asked: “How much time do you spend per week helping the person(s) you support? Please indicate the average number of hours per week.” This question was asked in 2017 and winter 2020/21 but not in the summer 2020 written short survey. All information on weekly time spent on support and caregiving that exceeded the upper limit of more than 80 h per week was set to the value of 80.

Gainful employment: Respondents who were either in part-time, full-time, marginal (“Minijob”) or irregular employment at the time of the interview were included in the analyses as “gainfully employed”. Respondents who were in retirement, in a form of early retirement (pension for reduced earnings capacity, occupational disability pension, early pension), in the release phase of partial retirement, in retraining, on maternity leave or parental leave, in unemployment, or in a homemaker role or who were not employed for any other reason at the time of the interview were categorised as “not employed”.

Use of statutory leave options to better reconcile care and work: Employed care-givers were asked the following question for the first time in the DEAS survey 2020/21: “There are various statutory offers for better reconciliation of care and work. Do you currently take advantage of any of these offers?” The following answer options were available: short-term absence from work (Kurzzeitige Arbeitsverhinderung), care leave (Pflegezeit), family care leave (Familienpflegezeit), care leave for accompanying someone in her/his last phase of life (Begleitung von nahen Angehörigen in der letzten Lebensphase), none of these statutory offers.

Care-giver burden: Respondents who provided care to people suffering from poor health answered the following question in 2017 and in the winter of 2020/21: “If you look at this support or care overall, how much of a burden does it place on you?” Respondents had the following response options: (1) “none at all”, (2) “fairly little”, (3) “fairly heavy” or (4) “very heavy”.

4 Findings

At the beginning of the pandemic, more people temporarily provided care

The share of people in the working-age population providing care increased significantly from 18 per cent to 22 per cent between 2017 and summer 2020 (Fig. 8.1). During the second pandemic wave, the care-giver share declined again (2020/21: 20.1 per cent) and was no longer statistically significantly different from the care-giver rate in 2017. Thus, during the first pandemic wave, more people from the working-age population provided support and care. In the second pandemic wave, support and care provision were again at a similarly high level as before the pandemic.

Fig. 8.1
A grouped bar graph of percentage values of total, women, and men plots 3 sets of bars for total, non employed, and employed. The 3 sets of bars are for 2017, 2020, and 2020 slash 2021. 2020 depicts the highest for all sets. The highest values of all 3 bars are in women.

Source DEAS 2017 (n = 2900), DEAS 2020 (n = 1649), DEAS 2020/21 (n = 2240), weighted analyses, rounded estimates. Statistically significant (p < 0.05): Total: increase between 2017 and 2020 for total and non-employed persons. Women: Increase between 2017 and 2020 for total and employed persons. Difference between women/total and men/total 2017, 2020, 2020/21

Share of people aged 46–65 providing care to people with health impairments, total, by employment status and by gender, in 2017, 2020 and 2020/21 (in per cent).

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If we look at employed and non-employed care-givers before and during the first wave of the pandemic, we see that non-employed persons provided care more frequently during the first wave of the pandemic than before the pandemic. The share of care-givers in the non-employed group increased between 2017 (17.8 per cent) and summer 2020 (25.0 per cent). By contrast, the increase was less pronounced and was statistically non-significant for the employed group (2017: 17.8 per cent; 2020: 21.4 per cent). During the second pandemic wave, the share of care-givers in both groups did not differ statistically significantly from the pre-pandemic care-giver rates. Thus, during the second pandemic wave, non-employed people provided care at a similarly high level as before the pandemic. The share of employed care-givers remained at a similar level as before the pandemic during both the first and second pandemic waves.

When we differentiated according to gender, at all times of measurement, we found that women provided care more often than men. In particular women provided care more often in the summer of 2020 than in 2017. During the second wave of the pandemic, they again provided care at a similar rate as before the pandemic. When we considered the shares of female and male care-givers separately according to whether they were employed or not, we found an increase for both non-employed women and non-employed men. However, these tendencies were statistically non-significant, which could be due to the relatively small number of cases in these subgroups.Footnote 4 However, the increase in the care-giver rate among employed women between 2017 and the first pandemic wave was statistically significant (2017: 20.5 per cent; 2020: 26.8 per cent). In the second pandemic wave, employed women provided care again with a similar rate as before the pandemic.

Overall, as expected, the pandemic was accompanied by a higher demand for care provided by family members, friends or neighbours. This additional need was reflected in the increase in support and care rates, especially during the first wave of the pandemic and was shouldered in particular by (employed) women from the working-age population.

Also during the pandemic: non-employed women spent the greatest amount of time providing care

Since no information on weekly time use for care tasks was collected in the written short survey in June/July 2020, we can only report information on the amount of time spent on care activities for 2017 and for 2020/21. For the working-age population, the amount of time spent on care shows an increase between 2017 and 2020/21 (2017: 8.1 h per week; 2020/21: 9.8 h per week), although this increase was statistically non-significant (Fig. 8.2). The trends broken down by employment status were also statistically non-significant.

Fig. 8.2
A grouped bar graph of hours per week for total, women, and men plots 2 sets of bars for total, non employed, and employed. The 2 sets of bars are for 2017 and 2020 slash 2021. The bars for 2020 slash 2021 are higher in all sets. The highest value among the bars of 2017 is 12.3% for non employed women.

Source DEAS 2017 (n = 550), DEAS 2020/21 (n = 459), weighted analyses, rounded estimates. Statistically significant (p < 0.05): Difference between employed women and men 2020/21; Difference between non-employed women and men 2017; Total: Differences between non-employed and employed persons 2017 and 2020/21; Women: Differences between non-employed and employed persons 2017 and 2020/21

Time devoted to care in hours per week among employed and non-employed care-givers aged 46 to 65, total and by gender, in 2017 and 2020/21 (arithmetic means).

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No statistically significant trend differences (2017 to 2020/21) can be identified for women and men in terms of weekly time spent on care.Footnote 5 However, during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, employed women spent more time on care activities than employed men (women: 9.1 h per week; men: 5.5 h per week). Before the pandemic, this gender difference was smaller (women: 7.6 h per week; men: 6.6 h per week) and statistically non-significant.

Both in 2017 and 2020/21, non-employed people devoted more time to care tasks than employed people (difference in 2017: 4.0 h per week; difference in 2020/21: 9.6 h per week). These differences were mainly due to women: non-employed women devoted far more time to care activities than employed women at every time point in the survey. Between non-employed and employed men in both 2017 and 2020/21, differences in time spent on care activities were statistically non-significant.

In summary, changes in the amount of care provided during the pandemic were statistically non-significant. However, the gender differences in the amount of time spent on care grew during the second pandemic wave compared to pre-pandemic times. A large amount of care was provided by non-employed women. This result may be related to the greater time available to non-employed persons. However, it may also indicate general difficulties in reconciling high-intensity care tasks with paid work (especially for women), as has already been documented in numerous studies (e.g. Kelle 2020; Ehrlich et al. 2020). In the next step, we therefore examine the extent to which an association between providing care and employment rates was evident in the pandemic.

Irrespective of the pandemic: high-intensity care is associated with lower employment

When looking at care-givers’ employment behaviour, it is important to differentiate according to the temporal extent of care, because temporally intensive care in particular is difficult to reconcile with gainful employment (Kelle 2020; Ehrlich et al. 2020; Ehrlich 2023). Accordingly, we distinguished between people with low-intensity (up to 10 h/week) and high-intensity (more than 10 h/week) care duties. As no information on time used for support and care tasks was collected in the written short survey in summer 2020, we can only provide information on the extent of support and care for the surveys in 2017 and winter 2020/21. Regardless of care intensity, there were no statistically significant changes in care-givers’ employment between the two survey time points (low-intensity care 2017: 81.6 per cent, 2020/21: 81.5 per cent; high-intensity care 2017: 63.0 per cent; 2020/21: 59.4 per cent; Fig. 8.3). Non-care-givers’ labour-market integration also remained unchanged. Moreover, no gender-specific trend differences were observed.

Fig. 8.3
A grouped bar graph of percentage values of total, women, and men plots 3 sets of bars for no care, less than 10 hours care, and greater than 10 hours care. The 3 sets of bars are for 2017, 2020, and 2020 slash 2021. The bar for less than 10 hours care reads the hightest in men at 87.3, and the bar for less that 10 hour care reads the highest in women at 81.1.

Source DEAS 2017 (n = 2874), DEAS 2020/21 (n = 2209), weighted analyses, rounded estimates. Statistically significant (p < 0.05): Difference between low-intensity care provided by women and men 2017. Difference between women and men without support and caring responsibilities 2017; Total: Differences between high-intensity care-givers and non-care-givers 2017 and 2020/21; Differences between low-intensity and high-intensity care-givers. 2017 and 2020/21; Women: Difference between high-intensity care-givers and non-care-givers 2020/21; Difference between low-intensity and high-intensity care-givers 2020/21; Men: Difference between low-intensity care-givers and non-care-givers 2017; Difference between low-intensity and high-intensity care-givers 2017

Employment rate of low-/high-intensity care-givers/non-care-givers aged 46–65, total and by gender, in 2017 and 2020/21 (in per cent).

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However, regardless of the pandemic, it was evident that high-intensity care-givers were significantly less often employed than non-care-givers. Their employment rate was significantly lower than the employment rate of non-care-givers in 2017 (−15 percentage points) and in winter 2020/21 (−20 percentage points). When we differentiated by gender, we found a statistically significant difference in the employment rate that only existed between female high-intensity care-givers and female non-care-givers in winter 2020/21 (−16 percentage points). Differences between the low-intensity care-givers’ and non-care-givers’ employment rates were statistically non-significant.

In summary, the pandemic did not negatively impact care-givers’ employment, despite restrictions on professional care services and in private support networks. The results may point to the fact that a large share of (employed) care-givers mostly had to provide everyday caregiving before and during the pandemic without the support of an informal and/or a formal network. Together with the results on time devoted to care, however, the result may also indicate that professional care service closures may have led to employed family care-givers being supported more by non-employed people from their informal support network during the pandemic.

Irrespective of the pandemic, people with high-intensity care responsibilities were significantly less often employed than non-care-givers. This result confirms previous research findings that indicated that support and /or care responsibilities of more than 10 h a week lead to severe reconciliation problems (e.g. Kelle 2020; Ehrlich 2023).

Policies aiming at improving the reconciliation of care and paid work were hardly used

During the pandemic, attempts were made to facilitate access to policies for employed care-givers and to make them more flexible so that work-care reconciliation could be improved. For example, the possibility to be absent from work in acute care situations (short-term absence from work) and the period of entitlement to a wage compensation benefit were extended from 10 to 20 days. Employees could announce their intention to take care leave and family care leave at shorter notice than before, and they could reduce the previously applicable minimum working hours of 15 h per week for family care leave.

However, it turned out that 98 per cent of employed care-givers did not make use of any care policies during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of the employed care-givers, one per cent made use of short-term absence from work and another one per cent availed of care leave. Family care leave and care leave for accompanying someone in the last phase of life were not used at all. This showed that the statutory measures helped very few people to reconcile care and paid work but were not used by most employed care-givers.Footnote 6

The non-use of policies aiming at improving the reconciliation of care and paid work during the Covid-19 pandemic went hand in hand with the observation that even before the Covid-19 pandemic, leave policies were rarely used (e.g. Hielscher et al. 2017). The reasons given for not making use of the leave policies were not knowing these measures, financial reasons, the difficulty in planning the course of care or the fear of negative consequences at work (Hielscher et al. 2017; Suhr and Naumann 2016). In addition, eligibility requirements (e.g. care recipient’s state-approved care dependency, employment relationship, company size) could also have made access to these statutory measures more difficult (Hielscher et al. 2017).

No increased care-giver burden during the pandemic

Overall, the average level of care-giver burden during the pandemic was similar to that before the pandemic (2017: 2.2; 2020/21: 2.1) (not shown). This meant that on average, those affected felt “not very burdened” by the care situation both before and during the pandemic. Even when we broke the analysis down by support/care intensity, employment status and gender, we found no statistically significant increase in care-giver burden. However, it was striking that for high-intensity care-givers who are non-employed men, their mean level of care-giver burden during the pandemic was even significantly lower than before the pandemic (2017: 2.7; 2020/21: 1.7; Fig. 8.4b). Overall, at both survey times, people who provided care for more than ten hours a week felt more burdened on average than people who provided low-intensity care—regardless of employment status (Fig. 8.4). However, during the winter 2020/21, non-employed women providing high-intensity care felt most burdened (2020/21: 3.0), followed by employed women providing high-intensity care (2020/21: 2.7) (Fig. 8.4b).

Fig. 8.4
2 grouped bar graphs of low intensity and high intensity caregivers. It plots mean of 4 responses versus 3 sets of total, non employed, and employed for total, women, and men. Each set has 2 bars for 2017 and 2020 slash 2021. Their highest values in graph A is 2.3% in non employed women, and in graph B is 3.0% in non employed women.

Source DEAS 2017 (n = 545), DEAS 2020/21 (n = 456) weighted analyses, rounded estimates. Statistically significant (p < 0.05): Men: decrease between 2017 and 2020/21 for time-intensive caring non-employed. Difference between low-intensity caring non-working women and men 2020/21; difference between high-intensity caring non-working women and men 2020/21

Care-giver burden among care-givers aged 46 to 65 years, by employment status, gender, and care intensity in 2017 and 2020/21 (arithmetic mean values).

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5 Conclusion

Even before the pandemic, it was often difficult to reconcile caregiving and gainful employment, especially for women. Women who are heavily involved in caring for family members, friends or neighbours have much higher probabilities of giving up gainful employment compared to women who do not do so (Kelle 2020). Those who spend lower amounts of time providing care increasingly switch to part-time work—at least if they can afford it financially (Kelle 2020; Ehrlich 2023).

However, we found little evidence that the support, care, and employment situation in the working-age population changed during the pandemic. Overall, we found that more people took on support and care tasks during the first pandemic wave than before the pandemic, probably in response to the pandemic-related restrictions. During the second wave, the level of support was then again at a similar level as before the pandemic. The average amount of time spent on support and caregiving tasks did not increase during the pandemic. Overall, women continued to provide support and/or care more often and in a more time-intensive way than men during the pandemic. In particular, non-employed women invested significant amounts of time in support and care tasks during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the descriptive findings presented in this chapter did not allow us to draw any conclusions as to whether the differences in the amount of time spent on care between non-employed and employed women were due to the fact that non-employed women have greater time availability or whether they were the result of the fact that high-intensity care is hardly compatible with employment. However, other studies suggest that high-intensity care increases the probability of giving up gainful employment (Kelle 2020; Ehrlich 2023).

Against the background of the temporary increase in the proportion of working-age care-givers, while the amount of time spent caring remained stable, the question of possible changes in care-givers’ employment during the pandemic was of further interest. Care-givers’ employment rates remained stable—both among low-intensity and high-intensity care-givers. However, at each survey time point, providers of high-intensity care were significantly less likely to be employed than persons who did not perform care tasks. The lower employment rate of high-intensity care-givers compared to non-care-givers underpins the conflict of reconciliation between (high-intensity) care and gainful employment. The association between high-intensity care and lower labour market integration applies to both women and men. However, women are more affected by this, as they more often provide care for family members, friends or neighbours than men.

In line with the stable amount of time spent providing support and care as well as the stable employment behaviour, care-givers’ average levels of care-giver burden did not increase in the pre-pandemic/pandemic comparison—regardless of the amount of time devoted to care. However, at each point in time of the survey, we found evidence of clear differences in care-giver burden between persons who provided low-intensity care and those who provided high-intensity care—independent of labour market integration. People with high-intensity care tasks felt more burdened than people with low-intensity care tasks. In addition, women with high-intensity care tasks felt more burdened than male care-givers who provided high-intensity care.

Another focus of this chapter was the possible exacerbation of gender differences in the field of support and/or care and accordingly a possible Covid-19-related retraditionalisation of gender roles. A retraditionalisation of gender roles during the Covid-19 pandemic has so far been discussed mainly for parents with minor children. Here, various studies have shown that mothers bore the main burden of care work during the pandemic and accordingly also reported greater stress and impairments in well-being (Kreyenfeld and Zinn 2021; Hank and Steinbach 2020; Möhring et al. 2020; Kohlrausch and Zucco 2020; Huebener et al. 2021; Hipp and Bünning 2021; Li et al. 2021). While a Dutch study concluded that gender inequalities in caregiving for family members, neighbours or friends were equalised during the pandemic (Raiber and Verbakel 2021), our findings, as well as those of other German studies (e.g., see chapter “Covid-19 crisis = care crisis? Changes in care provision and care-givers’ well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic”), suggest that women took on support and caregiving tasks more often than men during the pandemic. Furthermore, they show that employed women supported and/or cared for others to a greater extent than employed men. Thus, our findings suggest that a retraditionalisation tendency also existed in the area of support and care.

The existing statutory measures to better reconcile care and paid work were only used by a few employed care-givers. Possible reasons for this could be that the measures are not sufficiently known or are too complicated to apply for. Another reason could be that so far, only an interest-free loan but no wage compensation benefit is paid during (family) care leave and not all care-givers could afford to lose wages. As a recent study (Ehrlich 2023) shows, care-givers with low household incomes were less likely to switch from full-time to part-time work than those with higher household incomes. The introduction of a wage compensation benefit as planned in the coalition agreement between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP (Social Democratic Party of Germany et al. 2021) could help to ensure that more care-givers benefit from statutory measures than before.

However, the planned reforms can do little to change the fact that high-intensity care is hardly compatible with gainful employment (even part-time work) (Kelle 2020; Ehrlich et al. 2020; Ehrlich 2023). Thus, an additional expansion of the outpatient care infrastructure would be helpful to relieve family care-givers and improve the reconciliation of care for family members, friends or neighbours and paid work.