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

About the topic:

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. 

Irina Mozhaeva is a researcher at the University of Latvia. She holds a PhD in Economics (subfield – Econometrics) from the University of Latvia. Her research and publications focus on long-term care, health economics, social policies, labour market issues etc. As an expert she has participated in numerous World Bank and OECD research projects in Latvia and Estonia, e.g. „Estonia: Long-Term Care”, „Latvia: Active Ageing”, „Developing a Health System Strategy for Priority Disease Areas in Latvia”, “Connecting People with Jobs”, “Investing in Youth: Latvia”, “Latvia: Who is Unemployed, Inactive or Needy? An Assessment of Post-Crisis Policy Options”, as well as in other national level projects.