Unpaid care work for the elderly in Thailand: does the social gender norm on altruistic behavior matter?

Ageing societies pose an increasing demand for elderly care, particularly in developing countries where formal long-term care infrastructure remains underdeveloped. In these contexts, unpaid family caregivers, especially women, play a crucial role. However, gender care gaps shaped by prevailing social gender norms are seldom quantified, and the underlying factors behind these gaps remain underexplored in the literature. This paper investigates gender differences in elderly caregiving and examines how social gender norms influence caregiving patterns. Using nationally representative Thai time-use data from 2014 to 15 and the Labor Force Survey from 2013 to 15, we address two main questions (i) How does the social gender norm around altruism affect the gender care gap for the elderly, directly or indirectly, and through which channels? and (ii) How do men and women trade off care burdens with paid work or leisure time? We contribute to the body of literature on unpaid care work by analyzing the gender differentials in trade-offs associated with elder caregiving as both main and secondary activities. We develop a novel altruistic time ratio (ATR), defined as the time individuals allocate to others relative to time spent on themselves. We quantify the social gender norm (SGN) as the gender mean difference in ATRs, aggregated at the district-area level. The wide variation of SGN across Thai regions offers a broader societal perspective beyond individual and household characteristics in understanding caregiving behavior. Our findings, derived from single and multi-equation Tobit models, reveal that (i) SGN increases elderly care time for women by inducing their ATR while reducing it for men and (ii) significant trade-offs exist between elderly care time, leisure time, and paid work. These results provide empirical evidence on how social expectations shape caregiving behaviors and underscore the importance of recognizing societal influences when designing policies that support equitable elder care arrangements beyond state-provided long-term care.