This nationwide population-based cohort study investigated whether there was an effect of stroke on their spouses’ employment transition. To avoid that the effect on spouses’ employment rates would be cancelled out by some spouses decreased and others increased their labor supply after the stroke onset of their partner, we investigated the employment transitions separately for spouses that were employed and unemployed during five before the stroke events. The findings in this study showed that spouses who were employed prior to stroke onset had a 1.3 percentage points lower employment probability after the event compared to controls, and that spouses of younger age, with comorbid condition and low educational attainment may be at even greater risk of transitioning to unemployment.
Previous studies have shown that many stroke survivors experience long-lasting reductions in their ability to work and earn income (11, 29, 30). One of the most consistent predictors of stroke survivors return to work is stroke severity (31, 32). Stroke survivors with higher SES are more likely to return to work after the stroke event (29, 30). While economic theory suggests that couples often share their resources and make joint decisions about their work (12, 13), previous studies have found little change in spouses’ employment after a partner’s health shock on average (14–18). Jeon et al. (18) found effect heterogeneity with respect to stroke severity and age, where spouses of stroke survivors with more severe stroke as well as younger spouses were more likely to transit to unemployment after the stroke events. Similar to these findings, our results indicated that younger spouses were more likely to transit to unemployment, compared to spouses older than 50 years. Possible explanations for this findings could be that a partner’s stroke event might imply greater lifestyle changes for younger spouses than for older employed spouses (33), since spouses in this younger age group often have responsibilities of both family and working life (34).
Furthermore, previous research has shown that there is spousal concordance concerning cardiovascular risk factors, such as smoking habits, sedentary life, overweight and high blood pressure (35), high alcohol consumption and a poor diet (36). Recent meta-analyses have also confirmed high rates of spousal concordance for hypertension (37) and diabetes (38). The spouses of stroke survivors observed in our sample had more comorbidities compared to the controls, which support these findings. Nonetheless, even when analyzing the subgroup of spouses and controls with comorbidities, the spouses with comorbidities were more likely to transit to unemployment to a larger extent compared to controls with comorbidities. This finding suggests that spouses with comorbidities may experience a greater burden of the caregiving role that might result in difficulties to maintain their working life. Jansen et al. (39) found in a study of self-reported family-work conflicts that accommodations of working hours were more common in those who reported a family-work conflict. It can be hypothesized that spouses with comorbidities already experience family – work conflicts and when hit by a stroke event in the family the balance might be difficult to withstand. If so, this could serve as a possible explanation for the effect heterogeneity found with respect to comorbidities in our data.
In contrast to Garcia-Gomez et al. (16), we found evidence suggesting that the effect size of stroke on spouses employment probability for employed spouses prior stroke to become larger over time for spouses with lower educational attainment. Families of stroke survivors is overrepresented among individuals with low SES (40, 41) and are thus in a more vulnerable situation already before the stroke. Lower SES has been shown to negatively affect return to work for stroke survivors after stroke (29, 30), and our finding indicate that low educational attainment also affect transit to unemployment for employed spouses prior stroke onset. A possible explanation for this could be that women in groups with lower SES have weaker connection to the labor market (42). The risk of unemployment is greater for individuals who are easier to replace in the labor market, such as individuals with short-term employment contracts, or working part-time hour by hour that is common in female-intensive occupations such as healthcare and elderly care. Given that the majority of working-age spouses of stroke survivors are women, it is important for policy-makers to implement intervention to improve the employment security to increase the possibilities of spouses in lower SES to remain in the labor market when also being informal caregivers.
Strengths and limitations
The main strength of this study was the quality of data from national registries, including approximately 80% of all stroke survivors with stroke onset during 2010–2011, based on the coverage by the Swedish Stroke Registry. The choice of studying spouses of stroke survivors is also advantageous from a scientific perspective due to the sudden and unexpected onset of the disease, which gives a clear cut before and after situation. However, this study has a number of limitations that should be mentioned. First, since this study was based on national registry data there are limitations in the depth of the information including caregiving status, intensity of caregiving, and whether the spouses experienced psychological or physiological distress. Further research is needed to investigate whether these aspects, such as caregiving strain and hours of informal caregiving, have an impact on the labor market outcomes for spouses of stroke survivors. Second, the assessment of comorbidity is based on data for hospitalizations and visits to the specialists’ physicians, while healthcare utilization within primary care were not included in this study. Consequently, not all medical conditions are captured within the comorbidity measurements in this study, especially poor mental health such as depression, anxiety, stress and burnout syndrome. Further studies also including primary care utilization are necessary to have a broader picture of the spouses’ comorbidities. Third, since the economic crisis in 2008 and 2009, the employment rate in Sweden has increased every year. During the follow-up period of this study (from 2011 to 2016), the employment rate in Sweden increased from 65.4–67.1% in the working-age population (15 to 74 years) (43). Nonetheless, our findings show that the employment rate for employed spouses of stroke survivors’ decreased by 1.3 percentage points during the same period. This might imply that the impact of stroke on spouses’ employment transition might have been even greater if the follow-up period had been during a period of rising unemployment.