Even in a well-developed welfare state like in Norway, severe sickness of a person can severely affect the situation of their family members. While this is well-known in the context of older family members with care needs, this project focuses on the situation in young families, where parents live together with their minor children.
When a child or parent falls sick, both family members of the other generation (i.e., parents or children) and those of the same generation (i.e., siblings or partners) might be affected. The short- and long-term consequences we study in this project include family members’ education (e.g., school performance and educational attainment of children), employment (e.g., labor force participation, changes in working hours and wages) and health (e.g., health care usage). Besides describing such associations, a major goal of the project is to find out to what extent these are causal. The consequences of having a family member that is sick are likely to depend on individual and family characteristics. Thus, identifying societal groups that are specifically prone to – or resilient against – the negative consequences from having a family member that becomes sick is the second goal of this project. The characteristics examined will include sociodemographic information (age and gender), socioeconomic resources (family income and education), family structures (e.g., single parenthood) and community level resources (access to timely and high-quality health services). A third goal of the project is to identify pathways through which the sickness of a family member affects a person’s own educational or employment outcomes. Examining changes in behaviors (e.g., drug use, sleeping, exercise), mental health, attitudes and preferences will be key here.
To shed light on the above issues, the project will heavily draw on a combination of different Norwegian population-based registers, as well as on large longitudinal surveys.
