This is the query {that a} current NBER working paper by Nicole Maestas, Matt Messel, and Yulya Truskinovsky (2023) purpose to reply. The authors use knowledge from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) amongst particular person report offering unpaid care to household and pal. The SIPP knowledge are then linked to earnings knowledge from Social Security Administration. Individuals who present caregiving are matched with related people based mostly on demographics in addition to earnings/employment histories. Using this method the authors discover the next outcomes by gender:
Before girls begin offering care, there isn’t any distinction of their employment or earnings trajectories and people of non-caregivers or future caregivers. However, within the three years after girls start offering care, the employment of caregivers falls by 2.7 proportion factors (4 %) relative to the employment of future caregivers, or by 2.1 proportion factors relative to non-caregivers. The employment hole between caregivers and comparability teams narrows three to 5 years after care begins. The common annual earnings of feminine caregivers fall by practically $1,000 (4 %) within the first three years after caregiving begins, relative to the earnings of future caregivers, and stays about $600 decrease in years three to 5, though the longer-term distinction just isn’t statistically important.
For males, the image is sort of completely different. The employment and earnings of male caregivers start to say no 5 or extra years earlier than males start to supply unpaid care, relative to the trajectories of male non-caregivers and future caregivers. After they start offering care, male caregivers expertise an additional employment decline of three.7 proportion factors (5 %) relative to the management group of future caregivers. Male caregivers keep out of the labor power longer than do feminine caregivers, because the employment hole between male caregivers and their management teams persists in years three to 5 quite than narrows as seen for feminine caregivers.
You can learn the NBER digest abstract right here and the complete paper right here.