Altruistic Care for the Elderly: A Gender Perspective

Ageing society poses an increasing need for elderly care and the essential role of unpaid family care. Using time-use data of Thailand 2014/2015, we found significant gender gaps in providing eldercare across heterogenous groups. The novelty of this study is a measurement of altruism proxy, its gender bias to examine the effects of caregiver's altruistic behavior on care provision and to explain the caregiving burden on women. Our analysis reveals that education has different effects on care among male and female caregivers, but not the employment status. The instrumental variable modelling reveals that reducing men's paid work is unlikely to raise their time spent on eldercare and swapping leisure time for care time is one-for-one among men but multiplicative among women. Strong associations between altruism and peer pressure imply behavioral change strategies to target social norms and underpin policy interventions beside the state provision of long-term care for a more equitable eldercare work.