Abstract (EN)

In April 2000, a new public long-term care insurance (LTCI) system was launched in Japan with the aim of diminishing the burden of care in the household and increasing female labor market participation. This study takes advantage of the micro data files collected by the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) since 2007 to analyse whether informal care provided by middle-aged japanese women to their elderly parents affects their labour force participation. This analysis does not allow us to draw clear conclusions on the effect of long-term care insurance. However, it shows the situation almost a decade after the launch of the LTCI. The analysis compares women who are coliving with their elderly parents and those who are not. The estimations show that under exogeneity assumption, the provision of frequent informal care reduces the probability of labour market participation for both coliving women and not coliving carers. When treated as endogenous, the marginal effect of coresidential caring remains strongly negative while extraresidential caring does not have a significant impact anymore.