The Effect of Parent Care on Female Labor Market Outcomes

Abstract

In Korean society, the elderly population in need of care is rapidly increasing due to increasing longevity and low birth rate. At the same time, given the significant proportion of women involved in family elder care, informal care could potentially reduce women’s participation in economic activities. Therefore, we analyze the effect of parent care on women’s labor market outcomes by using data from the first to seventh waves of the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families (KLoWF). With the panel fixed effect model, we find that parent care reduces women’s work probability by 5.4%p and that one hour of informal care decreases women’s work probability by 1.8%p. Also, further analysis suggests that informal care has more negative effects for women who are less educated, in ages between 31 and 55 years old, and living with the spouse’s parents.