Abstract
In high income countries there has been an expansion of morbidity in older age. Much of the care this entails is provided informally. Women’s increased participation in paid work and increasing retirement ages are, together, increasing employment rates in midlife and early older age, so that balancing paid work and informal caring responsibilities is of increasing importance. This paper investigates how caring responsibilities and paid work are shared by couples, and the extent to which this sharing is gendered and socially patterned.
Data from five waves (2009/10–2013/14) of the UK Household Longitudinal Study were analysed. Our analytic sample was restricted to married or cohabiting couples (aged 16+ years) where one or both partners had a caring responsibility for a sick, elderly or disabled adult (20,189 observations on 9106 couples). Partners were categorised according to hours per week spent in paid work and on caring.
Latent class analysis ascertained 8 classes of households according to how partners share their responsibilities for paid work and caring. Classes were characterised as: No paid work, female carer (29.3%); No paid work, male carer (14.4%); Dual earners, both carers (21.9%); Male breadwinner, both carers (15.9%); Male (part time) breadwinner, both carers (5.3%); Modified male breadwinner, female carer (6.7%); Modified male breadwinner, both carers (1.2%); Female breadwinner, female carer (5.3%).
Multinomial regression analyses investigated the predictors of class membership, and found that age, education, incomes, health and the relationship to the person being cared for all predicted how caring and paid work were shared by couples.