BICEPS/SSE Riga Research Seminar: Informal caregiving and work: a high price to pay. The case of Baltic States

We kindly invite you to the BICEPS/SSE Riga research seminar! It will take place on Thursday, October 3 at 17.00 in room 611 with the presentation:

“Informal caregiving and work: a high price to pay. The case of Baltic States” by Irina Mozhaeva (University of Latvia).

Abstract

Based on EU-SILC 2016 year data, this study analyses the effect of informal care obligations on labour market outcomes in the three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, measured by labor force participation, employment, and the number of hours worked per week. We also estimate wage penalties related to informal caregiving among the employed males and females. While in wealthier countries substitution effect of caring usually exceeds income effect (Carmicheal and Charles, 1998) and informal caregivers are found to have less attachment to the labor force, we conclude that in countries like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania the income effect is relatively strong and therefore informal caregiving positively affects the decision to participate. However, caring has strong negative effect on probability of employment (given labour force participation) and supply of working hours (given employment). Wage penalties related to informal caregiving are large both for males and females, in particular for those who accept intensive care burden and are the main caregivers in their households.

To address endogeneity of the informal care variables in the labour force, employment and wage equations, we apply the instrumental variable method. The results obtained using ivreg2 Stata command proposed by Baum, Shaffer, and Stillman (2002) are coherent to those obtained after ivprobit and ivregress. To address the sample selection bias resulting from individual selection into the different labour market statuses we apply Heckman correction (1976,1979).

No prior registration for the seminar is necessary. For any questions about the seminar, or if you have a colleague that would like to be added to the distribution list, please write to Nicolas Gavoille.