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Offspring in Squeeze: Health and Sick Leave Absence among Middle-aged Informal Caregivers

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Abstract

This paper is motivated by the major future challenges that an ageing population would bring on a demand for an increase in the workforce and potential health outcomes on informal caregivers. Understanding the individual health and sick leave costs of caregiving is important for improving work and family policy and for ensuring that eldercare policies do not counteract other public goals. The main concern of this article has been to illuminate the relationship between full-time working caregivers and their health and sick leave absence outcomes. Using probit estimation, we found that that those combining full-time work with parental care were more prone to report poor health and had a higher probability of sick leave absence. However, the effect of giving parental care on health and sickness absence was differently distributed between male and female caregivers. For instance, male caregivers had a higher probability of reporting poor health compared to male non-caregivers. We did not find any significant differences in self-reported poor health among female caregivers and non-caregivers. In contrast, giving parental care indicated a higher probability of sick leave absence among female caregivers compared to female non-caregivers, while no significant difference was found among male workers.

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  1. University of Oslo Boks, 1072 Blindern, 0316, Oslo, Norway

    Elisabeth Ugreninov

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  1. Elisabeth Ugreninov
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Correspondence to Elisabeth Ugreninov.

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Ugreninov, E. Offspring in Squeeze: Health and Sick Leave Absence among Middle-aged Informal Caregivers. Population Ageing 6, 323–338 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-013-9091-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-013-9091-2

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