Employment Responses to a Partner’s Disability Onset (“Care Shocks”): Do Working Conditions Matter?

TL;DR

This study explores how people's work changes when a partner becomes disabled, and how job conditions influence this change.

Contribution

The study introduces the concept of 'care shocks' and shows how working conditions moderate employment responses to such shocks.

Findings

Care shocks significantly increase the likelihood of leaving paid work.

High job demands and dissatisfaction before a care shock increase the chance of leaving work.

Low job demands or satisfaction do not significantly affect work transitions after a care shock.

Abstract

This study examines employment responses to a partner’s disability onset and how this is moderated by working conditions: job satisfaction and psychosocial job demands.

We use longitudinal nationally representative data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging. Following the health shock literature, we identify individuals whose partners report the onset of difficulties in activities of daily living (ADL) or instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) between 2 waves (n = 1,020) as experiencing a “care shock.” We combine coarsened exact matching and entropy balancing, and logistic modeling to estimate the impact of such a “care shock” on the probability of leaving paid work, working part-time, changing jobs, or looking for a new job. We also explore the moderating effect of gender and working conditions (i.e., job demands and job satisfaction) on the impact of a “care shock” on work transitions.

Our findings show that “care shocks” significantly increase individuals’ likelihood of leaving paid work. This effect is moderated by job demands and job satisfaction. Individuals who report high job demands and job dissatisfaction before the care shock are significantly more likely to leave paid work. In contrast, those with low job demands or job satisfaction show no significant difference in their likelihood of leaving paid work.

Our study highlights the role of working conditions in moderating the impact of care shocks on paid work. It informs workplace policies, as our results suggest that adapting working conditions may facilitate participation in the labor market in late career stages.