Clinics in Mother and Child Health

Elderly Long-Term Care Policy Effects on Sandwich Caregivers’ Time Allocation between Child-Rearing and Market Labor

Akira Yakita^* Department of Economics, Nagoya City University, Yamanohata-1Mizuho-ku, Nagoya 467-0802, Japan
^*Correspondence: Akira Yakita, Department of Economics, Nagoya City University, Yamanohata-1Mizuho-ku, Nagoya 467-0802, Japan, Email:

Received: 26-Jul-2023, Manuscript No. CMCH-23-22333; Editor assigned: 28-Jul-2023, Pre QC No. CMCH-23-22333 (PQ); Reviewed: 14-Aug-2023, QC No. CMCH-23-22333; Revised: 21-Aug-2023, Manuscript No. CMCH-23-22333 (R); Published: 28-Aug-2023, DOI: 10.35248/2090-7214.23.20.470

About the Study

In recent decades, most economically developed countries have simultaneously experienced both extensions of life expectancy and increases in first-birth age. Therefore, the probability that adults will face responsibilities to care for both young children and old parents has increased. Mainly, women have provided such care [1]. The life expectancy of a representative woman in Japan is 87.45 years; her health life expectancy is 75.38. The age of first birth was 30.7 years in Japan in 2019. A woman cares for her child (here in assuming a girl) during ages 30.7-44.48 until the child’s graduation from university, cares for her mother during ages 52.9-56.55, and cares for both the child and mother simultaneously during 44.48-52.9. Such individuals caring for both parents and children simultaneously are called “sandwich generations” and “double carers” [2,3]. Yamashita and Soma reports from a sample survey of parents who have children of university students and younger during 2012-2018 that about 30% of Japanese people have experienced caring for both parents and children [4].

Childcare demands are predictable because parents can determine how many children they have and because the demands of caregiving decline as children age. By contrast, demands for elderly care are less predictable, although every individual has their own parents. The aging process differs greatly among persons and is unpredictable. Furthermore, demands for elderly care increase as elderly parent’s age. Because of demand uncertainty, elderly long-term care provision is a more important issue than childcare provision for sandwich or double caregivers [5,6]. Economically developed countries such as Japan, Germany, Korea, Luxembourg, Austria, Canada, the UK, and the US have public long-term care support systems to supplement or substitute informal supports.

The purposes of this study are to present an analysis of policy effects of public long-term care provision on the time allocation of sandwich or double caregiver generations among child rearing, long-term elderly care provision, and market labor supply using an overlapping generation’s model [7]. A representative (unisex) individual certainly lives for three periods: childhood, and younger and older adulthood. Individuals receive care from their parents during childhood. They work, save for their old period, rear children, and provide family long-term care for their dependent parents during young adulthood. Later, they retire in their old age, receiving long-term care from their children’s generation if they become dependent. Otherwise, they receive no care. We assume that elderly people cannot live without the necessary minimum level of assistance if they become dependent [8]. We assume that altruism of children toward their parents might be a social norm in the sense that they are ready to care for their dependent parents. Whether an individual becomes dependent or not when old is uncertain. An individual who remains autonomous consumes the fruits of savings without receiving long-term care. An individual who otherwise becomes dependent receives the necessary amount of elderly long-term care in addition to third-period consumption. Government provides each dependent person with a constant level of care that is less than the minimum level of long-term care by financing the cost through taxes imposed on the working generation. If the level of public care is less than the minimum level, then the difference between them is provided by children (forced) altruistically.

The qualitative results of this study are ambiguous. A numerical example is presented to present some intuition underlying the findings, with most parameters set to reflect the situation prevailing in Japan [9,10].

Conclusion

Here in the conclusion the results obtained in are explained here in after. Whether an increase in public long-term care provision increases the child-rearing time and the fertility rate, or not depends on the unit-cost efficiency of public long-term care provision. If the non-labor cost of public long-term care provision is sufficiently great, then it lowers the fertility rate through negative income effects of great tax increases although lowered after-tax wage rates, i.e., lower opportunity costs of child rearing, affect the fertility rate positively. Such is apparently the case for Japan. Although the market labor supply of young workers might increase, the effects on the total labor employment per worker in the consumption goods production sector are ambiguous. An increase in public care provision reduces family long-term care. By contrast, if labor productivity in the public long-term care sector improves, e.g., if the ratio of dependent persons to caregivers in public facilities is stipulated to the upper limit by laws qualifying acknowledged nursing-care institutions, then the time which is freed from family care provision raises the fertility rate and the market labor supply of young workers. Labor employment per worker in the goods production sector might not increase if the workers’ preference for having children is sufficiently strong.

The study does not include child policy such as birth subsidies, child allowances, and education (human capital investment) of children. It can also consider endogenous leisure time of parents within the time constraint. Finally, which bequest motives individuals have is still controversial, although this study assumes altruism. Strategic bequest motives could lead to different behaviors of individuals.

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