Caregivers in the family: Daughters, sons and social norms

摘要

We study long-term care (LTC) choices by families with mixedor same-gender siblings. LTC can be provided either informally by children, or formally at home or in an institution. A social norm implies that daughters suffer a psychological cost when they provide less informal care than the average woman. Daughters have a lower wage than sons so that their opportunity cost of providing LTC is smaller. Families maximize a weighted sum of children's and parent's utilities.