In 2004, California implemented legislation stipulating that employers of a specific scale must offer paid family leave to their workforce. While numerous studies have investigated the effects of this policy on the employment, income, and leave utilization patterns of new parents and women in their childbearing years, less attention has been devoted to examining how paid leave might influence older adults.
Recently conducted research at the University of Michigan addresses this gap and reveals a noteworthy trend. The findings indicate that the availability of paid leave has resulted in a reduction of time spent by older adults in caring for their grandchildren, while concurrently leading to an increase in the amount of time they dedicate to attending to their own parents.
Wider impact
“The law could affect older adults directly, by enabling them to take paid leave to take care of sick relatives when they wouldn’t have before. But it could also affect older adults indirectly, if it enables new parents to take paid leave,” the researchers explain.
“If grandparents provided significant amounts of care to their grandchildren because the parents of those grandchildren did not have access to paid leave, now that the parents of those grandchildren are able to take paid leave, we would expect to see grandparents spend less time caregiving to their grandchildren.”
The research team utilized data from the 1998-2016 waves of U-M’s Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal investigation involving approximately 20,000 Americans aged 50 and above, as well as their spouses. This nationally representative study entails biennial interviews with the participants.
Unpaid carers
Within the HRS, respondents with grandchildren were asked whether they or their spouses had dedicated 100 or more hours in the previous two years to taking care of their grandchildren. Those answering in the affirmative were further queried about the exact number of hours they and their spouses had spent on grandchild caregiving during that period.
Likewise, respondents with parents were asked whether they or their spouses had spent 100 or more hours assisting their parents with fundamental personal activities within the past two years. If the answer was affirmative, the researchers inquired about the number of hours each respondent and their spouse had expended in aiding their own parents and their spouse’s parents during that timeframe. The values for caregiving to the respondent’s own parents and their spouse’s parents were aggregated.
Moreover, the researchers were able to conduct a comparative analysis between California residents and residents of other states by employing a restricted-use version of the data that included state identifiers.
Significant support
Following the implementation of the paid-leave law, the researchers discovered that, on average, the respondents had dedicated 96 hours to assisting their parents with basic needs and 190 hours to caring for their grandchildren over the past two years.
In comparison to the period before the introduction of the paid leave law, this signifies a 17% reduction in the time spent by grandparents on grandchild care within the past two years and a 40-50% increase in the time allocated to aiding parents with personal activities. In terms of hours, older adults are now spending 39 fewer hours caring for their grandchildren and an additional 41 hours assisting their parents.
According to the researchers, the effects are more pronounced among women. Women have reduced their grandchild caregiving hours by 48 and increased their parent caregiving hours by 53. Men, on the other hand, have decreased their grandchild caregiving hours by 24 and increased their parent caregiving hours by 30.
It is important to note that these hours do not encompass the total amount of time individuals spend with their grandchildren or parents. The reported hours solely pertain to caregiving activities performed for family members.
The researchers emphasize the significance of examining the broader implications of this policy beyond its immediate impact on the caregiving decisions of new parents. They contend that the policy’s ramifications may extend to older adults, potentially influencing their capacity to remain in the workforce for an extended duration instead of opting for retirement in order to assume caregiving responsibilities for their parents.
“There has been a lot of focus on new parents and not as much focus on older adults, but they’re also people who engage in a lot of caregiving,” they conclude. “This law potentially supports older caregivers, which enables more options for providing care to their parents.”
