Gender and education inequalities in parental employment and earnings when having a child with increased care needs: Belgium versus Norway

Abstract

Caring for children with increased care needs can be demanding and the time required to provide such care hampers parents’ employment participation. Especially, mothers and lower educated parents are affected by the increased care burden and reduce or stop their employment participation. So far, the literature lacks studies investigating the employment impact in a comparative perspective. We fill this gap by comparing Belgium and Norway. We use comparable administrative datasets, identifying children with increased care needs as those receiving a cash benefit designed to financially compensate for the extra private care. The results confirm that gender and education inequalities exist in both countries. Moreover, we find that the negative care burden gap in employment depends on the country of residence, with significantly larger inequalities in Belgium. Our analyses suggest that increased support on multiple fronts is needed for these families.