leisure time and employment options

This analysis focuses on the relationship between the help given and received by older adults to their extended family members and their employment situations. Care given to grandchildren and parents are examined using multivariate models. Employment status is of particular interest, but gender and race are also considered.

key research questions

• What is the relationship between the help given by older adults to their extended family members and these older adults’ employment statuses and employment characteristics?
• What is the relationship between the help received by older adults from their family members and these older adults’ employment statuses and employment characteristics (e.g., hours on the job, pay level, benefits, job prestige)?

selected findings

• Employment among older adults reduces the likelihood of providing care for grandchildren.
• Provision of care to grandchildren, however, does not have an effect on the likelihood of employment.
• Both employed and non-employed older adults are equally likely to begin providing care to their parents.
• Employed older adults are less likely to receive care than those who do not work for pay.
• Conversely, those who receive care are less likely to be employed than those who do not receive care. Therefore, care received from extended family members does not appear to help older adults remain in the labor force.
• The inverse relationship between care receipt and employment holds in lagged models controlling for stability of care and employment.

publications

• The center will be publishing an Issue Brief on the topic of Help Transfers within Extended Families during the Summer of 2009.

contact

For questions of information regarding the Help Transfers within Extended Families Project, please contact:

Chad Minnich, MAVA, Assistant Director, Marketing & Communicaitons
minnicch@bc.edu  |  +1 . 617 . 552 . 3122

the help transfers within extended families project team

To schedule a conversation with any of our staff about the Help Transfers within Extended Families Project, please contact Chad Minnich, Assistant Director, Marketing & Communications, at 617-552-3122, or minnicch@bc.edu.

Jessica K. McCabe Johnson, MSW, MPA	Research Assistant Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College Doctoral Student Graduate School of Social Work, Boston College Jessica K. M. Johnson is a doctoral student at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. She received her BA from Boston College and her MSW and MPA from Columbia University. Her research interests are in the areas of aging and social security, the health and well-being of elders, cross-cultural and cross-national gerontology, social networks, and poverty.
Natalia Sarkisian, PhD	Associate Professor Department of Sociology, Boston College Dr. Sarkisian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. She is a co-principal investigator on the project. Her current research examines the gender gap in extended family caregiving, the relationship between extended kin support and older workers' employment, the effects of marriage and parenthood on extended family integration and marriage, as well as the racial/ethnic differences in extended family integration and in father-child involvement.
John Williamson, PhD	Professor Department of Sociology, Boston College John Williamson, a Professor of sociology, received his PhD in social psychology from Harvard University and SB in philosophy and physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Williamson has written extensively on the comparative study of social welfare policies, particularly those dealing with the elderly. His current research and writing efforts deal with the debate over generational equity and justice between generations in connection with Social Security policy in the United States, comparative international studies of social security policy, and quantitative studies of social, economic, and political determinants of cross-national differences in social policy and social justice issues such as income inequality, welfare state spending levels, pension spending, physical quality of life, and life expectancy. His recent work makes extensive use of comparative historical analysis and quantitative cross-national analysis.