How Do Middle-Aged Chinese Men and Women Balance Caregiving and Employment Income?

Unpaid family caregivers might suffer losses in income as a result of care provision. Here we used data from the baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study to assess the relationship between hours of weekly caregiving provided to grandchildren/parents/parents-in-law and individual’s monthly employment income. Our study sample comprised 3,718 middle-aged Chinese adults who were of working age (45-60 years). For women and men separately, we used a likelihood-based method to determine a caregiving threshold in a two-stage Heckman selection procedure. Instrumental variables were used to rule out the endogeneity of caregiving hours. Our analysis revealed a negative association between caregiving and income for women that depended on a caregiving threshold of 63-hours per week. There was an absence of caregiving-income relationship among men. These results offer new insights into the opportunity costs of unpaid caregiving and support tailored policies to protect the financial well-being of female caregivers.