Co-residence is a type of intergenerational private transfers of resources: money, time and space. Adult daughters and their elderly parents decide to co-reside, depending on their utility levels before and after co-residence that mainly depend on the...
Co-residence is a type of intergenerational private transfers of resources: money, time and space. Adult daughters and their elderly parents decide to co-reside, depending on their utility levels before and after co-residence that mainly depend on the health status of the elderly. Therefore, co-residence implies positive net benefits to both parties in the sense that, when they co-reside, elderly parents share childcare and adult daughter provide elderly care. In other words, formal (paid) care can be substituted with informal (unpaid) one. Both marriage and giving births are considered as the major obstacles to labor market attachment of women who bear burdens of home production and childcare. Co-residence can be a solution for married women to avoid career interruption by sharing burdens with their elderly parents. However, most previous studies using the U.S. data on intergenerational private transfers focused on elderly care and have concluded that they reduce government expenditures associated with public subsidies to the elderly. This study focuses on adult daughters and it examines effects of co-residence on labor supply of married women in Korea, who face limited formal childcare programs in terms of both quantity and quality. It applies the Tobit model of married women`s labor supply to the data from the Second Wave of the Korean Labor and Income Panel Survey(1999), in order to investigate effects of co-residence and the work and health status of the co-residing elderly as well as their own health status. Four specifications of the empirical model are tested that each includes co-residence with elderly parents, their gender, or their work and health status. Estimation results show mat co-residence, co-residence with female elderly, and co-residence with not-working female elderly have significant positive effects on labor supply of married women while poor health status of co-residing female elderly does not bring about any negative effects. However, co-residence with male elderly, regardless of their work and health status, has no significant effect The results indicate that co-residence is closely related to sharing of home production among female elderly and adult daughters who are married and, through intergenerational private transfers of resources in terms of time, it helps women avoid career interruption.