A recent working paper from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College uses data from nine waves of the Health and Retirement Survey.  The authors find that serving as a caregiver to elderly parents reduces a married man’s chance of working by 3.2 percentage points.  However, serving as a caregiver did not affect the wife’s chance of working.  Men’s decisions to work were not affected by whether or not their wife  is a caregiver.  Women who are the only care provider increase their  work hours by one hour per week, but women whose husband is the sole  caregiver decrease their work by 1.2 hours per week.  The authors  conclude: “Overall, for adult children with elderly parents who are married, there is considerable joint caregiving, and this joint  caregiving dampens the negative effect of caregiving on work that has been observed in other studies.”

A copy of the paper, “Do Couples Self-Insure? The Effect of Informal Care on a Couple’s Labor Supply” may be accessed at the Center for Retirement Research website or download the Executive Summary published Oct. 2011 by Norma B. Coe, Meghan Skira and Courtney Harold Van Houtven.