Health and work in the family: Evidence from spouses’ cancer diagnoses
Abstract
Using Canadian administrative data from multiple sources, we provide the first nationally representative estimates for the effect of spouses' cancer diagnoses on individuals' employment and earnings and on family income. Our identification strategy exploits unexpected health shocks and combines matching with individual fixed effects in a generalized difference-in-differences framework to control for observable and unobservable heterogeneity. While the effect of spousal health shocks on labor supply is theoretically ambiguous, we find strong evidence for a decline in employment and earnings of individuals whose spouses are diagnosed with cancer. We interpret this result as individuals reducing their labor supply to provide care to their sick spouses and to enjoy joint leisure. Family income substantially declines after spouses' cancer diagnoses, suggesting that the financial consequences of such health shocks are considerable.
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Female caregivers consistently reported higher caregiving time and greater adverse labor and productivity outcomes, including absenteeism, presenteeism, reduced working hours, job loss, and weekly hours of unpaid care, than male caregivers.
“Women consistently reported greater labor and productivity impacts than men.”
From Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses of Time-Use, Productivity, and Labor Outcomes Among Unpaid Cancer Caregivers (2026) · cites this paper as [20]
The regression results report larger relative earnings losses for women (5.9%) than men (3.4%), but similar employment reductions of about 2.4 percentage points. The Discussion also describes the gender difference as only slight. Our copy does not establish the claimed differences in caregiving time, absenteeism, presenteeism, job loss, or unpaid-care hours. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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Cites
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The direct and indirect financial costs of informal cancer care: A scoping review
Coumoundouros, C., Ould Brahim, L., Lambert, S. D., & McCusker, J. (2019) · Health & Social Care in the Community · doi:10.1111/hsc.12808 · Cited by 92 · see citing works
Allman, G., Morrell, L., Meheus, F., Ilbawi, A., Soerjomataram, I., MacKay, C., Reid, F., & Euripides, M. (2026) · JCO Global Oncology · doi:10.1200/go-26-00129
- Authors
- Jeon, S.-H., & Pohl, R. V.
- Affiliations
- Statistics Canada (CA)
- University of Georgia (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pohl, R. Vincent
- ORCID
- Jeon, Sung-Hee
- Venue
- Journal of Health Economics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-03
- Volume
- 52
- Pages
- 1-18
- ISSN
- 0167-6296 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2275493837
- Cited by
- 88
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 10.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Health Economics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic and Financial Impacts of Cancer
- Keywords
- labor supply, employment, earnings, household income, caregiving, household finance, health shocks
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Age Factors, Canada, Employment, Family, Female, Humans, Income, Male, Middle Aged, Neoplasms, Sex Factors, Spouses
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