How Care for Elders, Not Children, Denies Women a Paycheck<br />That is about two percentage points higher than at its previous peak in 1995, just a few years before<br />the labor supply of women in the prime working years — 25 to 54 years old — reached a plateau.<br />After years of sometimes scorching debates, over whether highly educated women were “opting out”; whether the stop was merely temporary;<br />and whether it responded to gender roles at home or labor-market conditions, the analysis seems to have converged on a sort of rough consensus: caring for children — overwhelmingly a woman’s task — ultimately took its toll.<br />After rising for half a century, the labor force participation rate among prime-age women began to decline<br />in the early 2000s — around the time the elderly share of the population began to rise sharply.<br />U. S. LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE<br />AMONG WOMEN AGES 25 TO 54<br />SHARE OF U. S. POPULATION AGE 65 OR OLDER<br />The stress is getting no lighter.<br />About a quarter of women 45 to 64 years old and one in seven of those 35 to 44<br />are caring for an older relative, according to the American Time Use Survey.<br />Almost 12 years ago, I gave the topic a shot in the pages of The Times: why, after a five-decade rise, did<br />the labor-force participation of women in the prime working years stall around the turn of the century?
