Stretched Too Thin? Gender Disparities in Labor, Caregiving, and Mental Health Responses to Partner Stroke

When a family member experiences a severe health shock, household members must reallocate time between employment and caregiving, with potentially significant welfare consequences. We examine how a partner’s stroke affects labor supply, informal caregiving, and mental health using longitudinal data from Japan (2005-2018) and a staggered difference-in-differences design exploiting the sudden nature of stroke. We document stark gender disparities: males show no significant changes in employment or mental health, while females maintain employment but increase caregiving by 6.8 percentage points, reallocate care from other family members to their partner, and experience significant mental health deterioration (Kessler-6 scores worsen by 0.41 points). These patterns reveal that females face binding time constraints—they are “stretched too thin”—unable to increase labor supply to offset household income losses (declining by 10.2 percent) while meeting intensive caregiving demands. Critically, these aggregate effects mask substantial heterogeneity: lower-educated females experience severe triple burdens—large income losses, increased caregiving, and mental health deterioration approaching clinical thresholds—while college-educated females manage caregiving increases without welfare losses. Our findings demonstrate that informal care policies impose substantial hidden costs concentrated among economically vulnerable women and have important implications for caregiver support policies in aging societies.