Labor of Love or Labor Lost? A Comparative Study of How Institutions Shape Gender Inequalities within the Work-Care Conflict

This thesis adopts a gender-sensitive perspective to examine how formal and informal institutions mediate the impact of informal caregiving responsibilities on labor market behavior, a dynamic commonly referred to as the work–care conflict. Using sudden health deteriorations among close family members as exogenous health shocks, we investigate how these events influence individuals’ paid labor supply and time allocation for middle-aged individuals. The analysis focuses on Germany and the Netherlands, two geographically proximate countries with significant differences in long-term care regimes as well as historically rooted social norms. By comparing these institutional contexts, we assess how caregiving responses are shaped by both formal welfare and labor market structures, as well as informal care expectations. Drawing on longitudinal panel data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we apply a Two-Way Fixed Effects framework with a Difference-in-Differences design to estimate causal effects on labor supply along both the intensive (hours worked) and extensive (employment transitions) margins over the life course. We further investigate effects on unpaid work, childcare, and leisure to better understand changes in the time reallocation underlying the work–care conflict.

Our findings underscore how gendered institutional arrangements structure caregiving outcomes and reproduce inequalities in late life. In the context of population ageing and growing health care expenditures, policymakers across Europe are increasingly considering ways to reduce public long-term care spending, including shifting responsibilities back to families. This study provides timely and cautionary evidence on the potential consequences of such policy shifts, emphasizing the need to account for existing gender and socioeconomic inequalities in care policy design.