Impact of elderly care on “sandwiched-generation” women in Turkey

Abstract

Abstract The aging population and, along with it, increasing long-term care needs create pressure globally on the social and health care spending of governments under the constraint of shrinking tax bases. The common tendency of governments is to minimize the cost by transferring the elderly care burden to families. However, care provision comes with penalties for caretakers in the form of potential income losses and a rising, unpaid workload that requires a gender-based assessment. These impacts intensify with additional demographic trends that impose new challenges. Increasing longevity accompanied by decreasing fertility and delays in having children in Turkey have contributed to the growth of the “sandwiched generation” which encounters the care needs of their elderly as they care for their children. This study investigates whether and how caring responsibilities can be associated with the caregivers’ economic participation in Turkey, where the retreat from institutional provisioning of elderly care services is concealed with a neoconservative family-oriented rhetoric. Using the 2014–2015 Time Use Statistics compiled by TurkStat, we analyze the relationship between informal elderly care provision and employment hours, taking into account the potential impact of providing elderly care on labor force participation, focusing on sandwiched- generation women.