Abstract
In this paper, I examine the effect of family co-residence and proximity on the labor force participation and working hours of Canadian women. I find lower labor market attachment for married women without young children who co-reside with their mothers (those women most likely to care for their elderly mothers) and for married women with young children who live more than half a day away from their mothers (those women least likely to benefit from the availability of family provided childcare). I find no effect of proximity for single women with children on the extensive margin, but do find that they work fewer hours if they live far from their mothers. The results hold only for proximity to living mothers (as opposed to proximity to widowed fathers), suggesting that it is the mothers themselves, and not merely the home location, that drives the results. I incorporate IV estimation using province of birth and whether one was born in the same province of either parent to estimate proximity, and find consistent results. To the extent that the positive effect of close proximity is related to the availability of grandchild care, policies that impact the labor force behavior of grandmothers may also impact the labor force behavior of their daughters. Regional patterns in proximity suggest that national childcare and labor market policies may yield different results across the country.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
To maintain consistency, I refer to the first generation as “mothers” or “mothers-in-law”, the second generation as ‘(adult) men or women’ and the third generation as ‘children’.
SHARE is the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, a large multi-country panel covering over 45,000 individuals over the age of 50.
Location has also been considered exogenous in the broader childcare literature. For example, studies that use variations in childcare regulations or childcare reforms to estimate the impact of price of childcare on labor supply (Baker et al. 2008; Lefebvre and Merrigan 2008; Schlosser 2005; Berlinski et al. 2009; Cascio 2009) do not consider the potential endogeneity of location—that women who would prefer to work may be more likely to move to (or remain in) locales with more accessible childcare. A notable recent exception is Havnes and Mogstad (JPE, 2011).
The survey is conducted by telephone and the sample is selected through “Random Digit Dialling” (RDD). Therefore, households without telephones are not included in the sample (approximately 2 % of the target population). Also, households with only cellular telephone service would not be included in the sample (5 % of the Canadian population).
See Appendix 1 for summary statistics.
In 2009, 31.7 % of all births in Canada were to women aged 30–34; 17.8 % to women aged 35–59 and 3.0 % to women aged 40–44.
The Canadian Census provides mobility information of the respondent, but not proximity. The Survey of Labor and Income Dynamics provides information on the changing proximity of the original household, but not of extended family.
I collapse category (a) in with co-residents. There is no stipulation that mothers live in Canada. Presumably, mothers outside Canada will largely fall into category (e).
I do not have information on the marital status of children of respondents, hence Sample D includes both married and non-married adults.
The provinces in Atlantic Canada are Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. The Western provinces are split into two categories, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are combined in one category, with Alberta and British Columbia in the other.
The figures change only slightly when immigrants are excluded from the sample.
Controls were included for current region of residence and region of birth (for both, the categories are Atlantic, Quebec, Manitoba/Saskatchewan and Alberta/BC, with Ontario omitted). The results for the regional variables are consistent with the patterns presented in Fig. 1. Also included in the regressions, but not presented due to space constraints, are indicators for whether father is living, CMA status, age, age squared, household income, second (or higher order) marriage and visible minority status.
Recall that mothers alive in another country are still included in the proximity variables, most likely falling in the “more than ½ day away” category.
Controls are included (but not presented due to space constraints) for adult child’s age and age squared, mothers region of residence and CMA status, and an indicator for step/adopted children.
The different results may be explained by econometric modelling. Konrad et al. incorporate an ordered regression analysis with groups of proximity as the dependent variable, and find a positive coefficient on eldest child. With a multinomial probit approach I find that the eldest child status affects the probability of living outside the mother’s house, but not a higher likelihood of moving “away”.
This analysis excludes Sample D, since this sample contains no information on adult child’s labor force behavior.
Controls included in each regression include the daughters’ age, age squared, current region of residence, CMA status, education, mother’s education, whether her father is alive, immigrant status, visible minority status, other family income, number of children at home and presence of children under the age of 15 and the presence of children over the age of 15. For the full sample, I also include marital status. For sample A and C, controls are included for first marriage, spouse’s main activity and spouse’s education. For sample B, controls are included for marital status (single, never married, separated/divorced or widowed).
The NSFH codes distances by exact miles rather than groups. Limiting the sample to married women with children 12 and under, I find that 67 % of those who live 5 miles or less from their mothers (in the same neighborhood) receive some childcare from their mothers in the past month. This figure dropped to 56 % for those 6–25 miles away (in the same surrounding area), to 31 % for those 25–200 miles away (less than ½ day away) and to 13 % for those more than 200 miles away.
Compton and Pollak (2011) are able to define distance to both mother and mother-in-law in the US data and find a clear effect of mother-in-law proximity.
The regressions presented in Tables 6 and 7 have been re-estimated first using a younger sample (excluding those aged 55–60) and second redefining young children as those aged 12 and under. With the younger sample, the key results are consistent. The effect of children on the probability of work for married women depends on location, with a positive coefficient on the interaction of children and coresidence and a negative coefficient on the interaction of children and living more than ½ day away. However, these fail to meet standard level of significance, with p values of 0.12 and 0.17 respectively. Results for proximity in the Tobit regression are similar to the full sample, and maintain significance. Redefining young children to be aged 12 and under also yields qualitatively similar results for key coefficients, but again the results are now insignificant.
See Compton and Pollak (2009) for further discussion on this point.
This includes older children of all ages regardless of where they live.
These coefficients may be biased downwards due to persistence. If the negative effect of residing away from one’s mother is due to childcare availability, when that childcare is no longer needed there may be a readjustment time before the woman re-enters the labor force. Thank you to an anonymous referee for this point.
Preliminary work included both men and women in the samples, however, proximity was never relevant for the labor force participation of men and the sample was dropped.
Those with both mother and father deceased are omitted. The proximity measure will be in error if the woman’s mother and father were not married to each other prior to her mother’s death and her father lived in a different location, or if her father moved after the death of her mother.
Due to the definition of the instrumental variables, immigrants are excluded from the sample. Women with deceased mothers are also excluded, given the results from Table 9. In the results presented, co-residents are included in the base group. The results do not change if co-residents are excluded from the sample. I estimated the same regressions on an expanded definition of ‘far away’, which included all those who lived outside the surrounding area. Results were similar.
A direct effect of region of birth on current labor force participation may still exist if there was disparity in the provincial education systems when the mothers, or if persistently high unemployment in a region reduced the ability of future migrants to gain labor market experience in their home region. These may have long lasting effects on labor supply. Thank you to an anonymous referee for pointing out these possibilities.
A direct comparison of the coefficients with the probit models is not possible, as the base case differs (here proximity is binary whereas in the probit analysis proximity includes four categories). The IV results would be interpreted as a Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) rather than Average Total Effects: estimating the effect of proximity on work for the subgroup who would live away if they were born in a certain region, but not if they were born in another.
References
Baker, M., Jonathan, G., & Kevin, M. (2008). Universal child care, maternal labor supply, and family well-being. Journal of Political Economy, 116(4), 709–745.
Belan, P., Messe, P.-J., Wolff, F.-C. (2007). Postponing retirement age and labor force participation: The role of family transfers. Manuscript.
Berlinski, S., Galiani, S., & Gertler, P. (2009). The effect of pre-primary education on primary school performance. Journal of Public Economics, 93(1–2), 219–234.
Bolin, K., Lindgren, B., & Lundborg, P. (2008). Your next of kin or your own career? Caring and working among the 50+ of Europe. Journal of Health Economics, 27(3), 718–738.
Cardia, E., & Ng, S. (2003). Intergenerational time transfers and childcare. Review of Economic Dynamics, 6(2), 431–454.
Cascio, E. (2009). Maternal labor supply and the introduction of kindergartens into American public schools. The Journal of Human Resources, 44(1), 140–170.
Clark, W. A. V., & Withers, S. D. (2002). Disentangling the interaction of migration, mobility and labor-force participation. Environment and Planning A, 34(5), 923–945.
Clark, R., & Wolf, D. A. (1997). Proximity of children and elderly migration. In A. Rogers (Ed.), Elderly migration and population redistribution (pp. 77–96). London: Belhaven.
Compton, J., & Pollak, R. A. (2007). Why are power couples increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas? Journal of Labor Economics, 25(3), 475–512.
Compton, J., & Pollak, R. A. (2009). Proximity and coresidence of adult children and their parents: Description and correlates. Michigan Retirement Research Center Working Paper WP 2009–215.
Compton, J., Pollak, R. A. (2011). Family proximity, childcare and women’s labor force attachment. NBER Working Paper No. 17678.
Danielsbacka, M., Tanskanen, A. O., Jokela, M., & Rotkirch, A. (2011). Grandparental child care in Europe: Evidence for preferential investment in more certain kin. Evolutionary Psychology, 9(1), 3–24.
Dimova, R., & Wolff, F.-C. (2008). Grandchild care transfers by ageing immigrants in France: Intra-household allocation and labor market implications. European Journal of Population, 24(3), 315–340.
Dimova, R., & Wolff, F.-C. (2011). Do downward private transfers enhance maternal labor supply? Evidence from around Europe. Journal of Population Economics, 24(3), 911–933.
Fast, J., Keating, N., Otfinowski, P., & Derksen, L. (2004). Characteristics of family/friend care networks of frail seniors. Canadian Journal of Aging, 23(1), 5–19.
Glaser, K., & Tomassini, C. (2000). Proximity of older women to their children: A comparison of Britain and Italy. The Gerontologist, 40(6), 729–737.
Greenwood, M. J. (1985). Human migration: Theory, models, and empirical studies. Journal of Regional Science, 25(4), 521–544.
Hotz, V. J., McGarry, K., & Wiemers, E. (2010). Living arrangements of mothers and their adult children over the life course. Manuscript.
Konrad, K., Kunemund, H., Lommerud, K. E., & Robledo, J. R. (2002). Geography of the family. American Economic Review, 92(4), 981–998.
LeClere, F. B., & McLaughlin, D. K. (1997). Family migration and changes in women’s earnings: A decomposition analysis. Population Research and Policy Review, 16(4), 315–335.
Lefebvre, P., & Merrigan, P. (2008). Child-care policy and the labor supply of mothers with young children: A natural experiment from Canada. Journal of Labour Economics, 26(3), 519–548.
Lichter, D. T. (1983). Socioeconomic returns to migration among married women. Social Forces, 62(2), 487–503.
Lin, G., & Rogerson, P. A. (1995). Elderly parents and the geographic availability of their adult children. Research on Aging, 17(3), 303–331.
López-Anuarbe, M. (2012). Intergenerational transfers in long term care. Review of the economics of the household. doi:10.1007/s11150-012-9156-7.
Marr, W. L., & Millerd, F. W. (1988). Migration and the employment status of married women. Canadian Journal of Regional Science, 11(1), 119–132.
Mincer, J. (1978). Family migration decisions. Journal of Political Economy, 86(5), 749–773.
Pezzin, L., Pollak, R. A., & Schone, B. S. (2007). Efficiency in family bargaining: Living arrangements and caregiving decisions of adult children and disabled elderly parents. CESifo Economic Studies, 53(1), 69–96.
Posadas, J., Vidal-Fernandez, M. (2012). Grandparents’ childcare and female labor force participation. IZA Discussion Paper No. 6398.
Rainer, H., & Siedler, T. (2009). O brother, where art thou? The effects of having a sibling on geographic mobility and labor market outcomes. Economica, 76(303), 528–556.
Rogerson, P. A., Burr, J. A., & Lin, G. (1997). Changes in geographic proximity between parents and their adult children. International Journal of Population Geography, 3(2), 121–136.
Rogerson, P. A., Weng, R. H., & Lin, G. (1993). The spatial separation of parents and their adult children. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 83(4), 656–671.
Schlosser, A. (2005). Public preschool and the labour supply of arab mothers: Evidence from a natural experiment. Manuscript.
Silverstein, M. (1995). Stability and change in temporal distance between the elderly and their children. Demography, 32(1), 29–45.
Spitze, G. (1984). The effect of family migration on wives employment: how long does it last? Social Science Quarterly, 65(1), 21–36.
Wolf, D. A., & Soldo, B. J. (1994). Married women’s allocation of time to employment and care of elderly parents. The Journal of Human Resources, 29(4), 1259–1276.
Zamarro, G. (2009). Family labor participation and childcare decisions: The role of grannies. Unpublished Manuscript, RAND Corporation.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Jie Pan, Robert A. Pollak, Frances Woolley, Carl Shu-Ming Lin, two anonymous referees, participants of the RDC 2010 conference, the CLRSN 2011 conference, and the University of Calgary seminar series for helpful comments, and Ian Clara at RDC Manitoba for assistance with data requests. While the research and analysis are based on data from Statistics Canada, the opinions expressed do not represent the views of Statistics Canada.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Compton, J. Family proximity and the labor force status of women in Canada. Rev Econ Household 13, 323–358 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-013-9179-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-013-9179-8