The Complexities of Family Health: Predicting Women’s Employment

• In Event: 082 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session I
  In Refereed Roundtable: A. Table 13. Family II

Abstract

An extensive sociological literature links women’s health, their children’s health, and their disproportionate designation as unpaid caregivers to variation in women’s labor supply and earnings. However, there is a dearth of research that simultaneously considers the health of multiple family members to explore how the distribution of chronic conditions within and across families may relate to women’s work. Using data from the 2007 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (and its supplemental surveys, the Child Development Supplement and the Transition into Adulthood Study), this paper conceptualizes health as a family-level construct and explores how the distribution of chronic conditions in families relates to women’s probability of employment, with particular attention to disparities by women’s educational attainment. I note substantial variation in the distribution of illness across families, and prepare to explore the relationship between health and women’s employment, examining both specific diagnoses and counts of chronic conditions at the family level, and among specific family members. This research could emphasize the importance of multidimensional examinations of health, and the utility of considering the broader family context in which women’s employment outcomes unfold.

Author

• Jessica A. Carson, University of New Hampshire