Parental Cancer and Adult Children’s Sickness Absence in a Nordic Welfare Context

Michael Thomas , Statistics Norway
Astri Syse, Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Øystein Kravdal, Norwegian Institute of Public health

Young children are known to be deeply affected by severe parental health shocks, but the impact on adult children has been less studied. With population ageing and rising prevalence of serious non-communicable diseases, understanding how parental health shocks influence adult children’s labour force participation and welfare service use is increasingly important for individuals, employers, and policymakers. Using Norwegian full-population register data from 2000–2018 and individual fixed-effects models, we examine whether a parent’s cancer diagnosis or death affects adult offspring’s doctor-certified sickness absence during prime working age (30–40 years). To contextualize our findings, we will compare the effects of parental cancer with those of two other major life crises: parental divorce and spousal death. Our results show modest spill-over effects of parental cancer on adult offspring’s sickness absence. A cancer diagnosis in a parent has a minor effect, while parental cancer death leads to a more pronounced but still temporary increase in sickness absence. The largest observed effect (an additional 6.5 days of sickness absence) occurs when a parent is diagnosed with cancer and dies within the same year. Further analyses will identify the specific diagnoses driving sickness absence, with mental health conditions expected to predominate. We will also examine heterogeneity by offspring/parental sex. Norway’s comprehensive public health and care system likely mitigates the health response to parental cancer and the need for prolonged or large-scale labour withdrawal of family members, helping explain the modest impacts we observe.

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 Presented in Session 124. Intergenerational Mobility and Influences