Characteristics of Caregiving and Work-Related Burdens for Adult Children Caring for Older Parents

Abstract

This study helps expand our knowledge on the link between caregiving and work by examining how characteristics of caregiving—intensity and regularity of care—relate to work. It is among the first studies to recognize that regularity of care might be linked with work independently of intensity of care. Moreover, unlike previous studies that imply the impact of caregiving on work based on the difference in the likelihood of working and total hours worked between caregivers and non-caregivers, our study uses the explicit reports from caregivers of the impact of caregiving on their ability to do paid work and, conditional on working, hours of work lost due to caregiving. We pool data from the first three waves of the National Study on Caregiving (NSOC) that has detailed information on family and other unpaid caregivers of Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older. We use a structural equation modeling approach to accommodate the complex nature of the relationships between work-related outcomes, intensity and regularity of care as the key predictors of interest, and other relevant caregivers’ and care recipients’ personal characteristics that are related with both the outcomes of interest and key predictors. Results provide tentative evidence that caregivers are more likely to miss work and, if working, work fewer hours if they provide more care and if they need to provide it more frequently. At any given level of caregiving intensity, more frequent care provision is related with more adverse work-related outcomes.