Informal caregiving & labour opportunity

Previous research provides evidence of a negative relationship between informal caregiving and em-ployment. However, little is known about the labour opportunity costs male and female informal care-givers incur across different European countries. Using data from the European Community House-hold Panel (1994-2001), this thesis sheds lights on the effects of informal caregiving on labour market outcomes, such as working hours and wages. A distinction between Northern and Southern European countries is made to examine a possible north-south gradient. Fixed effects models are estimated in order to control for unobserved individual heterogeneity and Tobit models are estimated to control for censoring. The sample is restricted to middle aged working men and women living in 11 European Union countries. The findings of this study suggest that different dynamics and intensities of informal caregiving bring significant labour opportunity cost for male and female caregivers living in Northern and Southern European countries. In addition, different dynamics and intensities of informal caregiv-ing cause substantial differences between the Northern and Southern European caregivers. The results suggest that the effect of different informal care dynamics on working hours is more negative in Southern countries. No effect is found for the different informal care dynamics on wages. Moreover, working hours and wages are easier to maintain when providing low or medium levels of intensity informal care in Southern Europe. These differences are believed to be caused by different institu-tional settings, macro-economic conditions, and cultures.