Public defence: Hanna Vangen

This thesis investigates paid and unpaid work in the second half of life. Unpaid work is regarded as formal volunteering or informal help and caregiving for family and the social network. 

Participation in paid and unpaid work are studied in relation to two events that can occur in this phase of life. The first is the transition to having parents who may need help or care and the adoption, or intensification, of a potential caregiver role. The second event is the transition from paid work to retirement. Central questions concern the extent to which there exists a competing or complementary association between paid and unpaid work, as well as whether engagement in unpaid work can be explained by previous engagement and motivations in unpaid work. The overall research question is: How is participation in unpaid work motivated, and related to paid work in the second half of life?

The first paper indicates a competing relationship between paid and unpaid work (both volunteering and informal help and caregiving). By studying people in an age group (62–75 years) who have the opportunity to retire, I find that both work exit and part-time work are associated with a higher probability of doing unpaid work compared with remaining in full-time work. However, previous engagement in unpaid activities matters considerably, regardless of paid work status, showing that the concept of continuity is the most important predictor of unpaid work engagement in later life.

In the second paper, I examine the extent to which the motivation for informal help and care for parents can be found earlier in the life course. I find no association between either previously expressed norms of filial responsibility or the concurrent employment status, but the quality of the relationship between adult children and their parents matters for the care they provide 10 years later.

Finally, in the third paper, I study how caregiving for parents in the last period of their lives is related to the adult children’s employment and earnings in the same period. I find no association with employment but a decline in earnings among caregivers compared with non-caregivers, before and after the death of the parent. For caregiving daughters, this decline starts before the year of death, while earnings of both caregiving sons and daughters decline after the parent’s death.

The results indicate a competing relationship between paid and unpaid work in the second half of life, but the manner in which this association emerges depends on the life transition being studied. Unpaid work is related to work exit for those with the opportunity to consider retiring. In the last period of a parent’s life, care provision for parents is found to be negatively related to earnings but not to the probability of being employed. The results also show that participation in unpaid work is embedded in patterns created earlier in life, and not necessarily first initiated after retirement. Previous perceived quality of the relationship with the parent was associated with provision of help and care from daughters, not sons, but the agreement with filial responsibility norms was not associated with informal care.

This thesis does not employ causal designs according to counterfactual tradition, and it cannot draw conclusions about the causal direction of these relationships based on its studies alone. However, the thesis describes and offers new knowledge and interpretations of the associations between paid and unpaid work status found in previous research. Participation in paid and unpaid work is studied using the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation Study (NorLAG) which consists of longitudinal survey data linked to data from public registers. By using the linked and longitudinal data of the NorLAG study, the thesis shows that both earlier participation and relational patterns should be taken into consideration to understand the association between paid and unpaid work in the second half of life.