The trade-off between work and informal care in Europe.

This paper focus on the trade-between work and informal care among individuals aged 50 to 65.We first outlines the standard microeconomic model used to study how individuals allocate their time between labour, parental care and leisure. From the two first-order conditions of the standard model, we jointly estimate the time devoted to work and care through a bi-tobit model allowing to take into account both the simultaneity of the decisions and the censure which characterizes each variable. The model is estimated using data from SHARE, a European multidisciplinary database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and family network. Estimation results do not appear consistent with the standard microeconomic framework and lead us to reformulate the microeconomic model in order to take into account a potential positive e¤ect of the worker status on the propensity to provide care The reformulation proposed is empirically validated by the the estimation of a double selection model. Our main nding confirms results of qualitative survey and suggests that the effect of paid work on time devoted to care may be decompose into (i) a discret positif effect, the labour market participation affecting positively the propensity to provide care, and (ii) a continuous negative effect, each worked hour reducing time devoted to parental care.