IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v73y2018i4pe24-e34..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Long-term Care Provision and the Well-Being of Spousal Caregivers: An Analysis of 138 European Regions

Author

Listed:
  • Melanie Wagner
  • Martina Brandt

Abstract

ObjectivesThe individual burden of caring for one’s relatives not only depends on care characteristics but is also related to contextual factors. The objective of this study is to determine whether regional formal long-term care provision is linked to the well-being of spousal caregivers introducing the concept of “control†as central pathway to explain this link.MethodWe applied multilevel analysis using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) from over 29,000 Europeans and 1,800 spousal caregivers located in 138 regions in 11 countries to analyze the effects of regional contexts on caregiver well-being. The provision of formal care in a region was measured by the number of long-term care beds in nursing and residential homes among the older population.ResultsWe found that spousal caregivers’ well-being, measured in terms of life satisfaction, loneliness, and depression, was positively linked to the regional availability of formal care, which is partly due to higher perceived control in regions with more formal care provision.DiscussionOur results suggest that formal care supply is essential not only for care recipients but also for caregivers: perceived alternatives to the private care arrangement go along with greater well-being of informal caregivers.

Suggested Citation

  • Melanie Wagner & Martina Brandt, 2018. "Long-term Care Provision and the Well-Being of Spousal Caregivers: An Analysis of 138 European Regions," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 73(4), pages 24-34.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:73:y:2018:i:4:p:e24-e34.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbx133
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. K. Bolin & B. Lindgren & P. Lundborg, 2008. "Informal and formal care among single‐living elderly in Europe," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 393-409, March.
    2. Cora J. M. Maas & Joop J. Hox, 2004. "Robustness issues in multilevel regression analysis," Statistica Neerlandica, Netherlands Society for Statistics and Operations Research, vol. 58(2), pages 127-137, May.
    3. Ferdinand A. Gul & Judy S. L. Tsui, 2004. "Introduction and overview," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Governance of East Asian Corporations, chapter 1, pages 1-26, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Dujardin, Claire & Farfan-Portet, Maria-Isabel & Mitchell, Richard & Popham, Frank & Thomas, Isabelle & Lorant, Vincent, 2011. "Does country influence the health burden of informal care? An international comparison between Belgium and Great Britain," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(8), pages 1123-1132.
    5. Bonsang, Eric, 2009. "Does informal care from children to their elderly parents substitute for formal care in Europe?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 143-154, January.
    6. Oudijk, Debbie & Woittiez, Isolde & de Boer, Alice, 2011. "More family responsibility, more informal care? The effect of motivation on the giving of informal care by people aged over 50 in the Netherlands compared to other European countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 228-235, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gonçalves, Judite & von Hafe, Francisco & Filipe, Luís, 2021. "Formal home care use and spousal health outcomes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    2. Bom, Judith & Stöckel, Jannis, 2021. "Is the grass greener on the other side? The health impact of providing informal care in the UK and the Netherlands," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    3. André Hajek & Benedikt Kretzler & Hans-Helmut König, 2021. "Informal Caregiving, Loneliness and Social Isolation: A Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(22), pages 1-12, November.
    4. Fátima Barbosa & Sara Simões Dias & Gina Voss & Alice Delerue Matos, 2023. "The Longitudinal Association between Co-Residential Care Provision and Healthcare Use among the Portuguese Population Aged 50 and Over: A SHARE Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-14, February.
    5. Iegor Rudnytskyi & Joël Wagner, 2019. "Drivers of Old-Age Dependence and Long-Term Care Usage in Switzerland—A Structural Equation Model Approach," Risks, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-20, August.
    6. Uccheddu, Damiano & Gauthier, Anne H. & Steverink, Nardi & Emery, Tom, 2019. "The pains and reliefs of the transitions into and out of spousal caregiving. A cross-national comparison of the health consequences of caregiving by gender," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    7. Alina Schmitz & Martina Brandt, 2022. "Health Limitations, Regional Care Infrastructure and Wellbeing in Later Life: A Multilevel Analysis of 96 European Regions," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(2), pages 693-709, November.
    8. Marie Agapitos & Graciela Muniz-Terrera & Annie Robitaille, 2024. "Older caregivers’ depressive symptomatology over time: evidence from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 1-14, December.
    9. Rong Fu & Dung Le & Yoko Ibuka, 2023. "The impact of contracting formal care benefits on caregivers�fwell-being: evidence from Japan," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2023-005, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elena Gentili & Giuliano Masiero & Fabrizio Mazzonna, 2016. "The Role of Culture in Long-term Care," IdEP Economic Papers 1605, USI Università della Svizzera italiana.
    2. Bauer, Jan Michael & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2015. "Impacts of Informal Caregiving on Caregiver Employment, Health, and Family," IZA Discussion Papers 8851, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Plaisier, Inger & Verbeek-Oudijk, Debbie & de Klerk, Mirjam, 2017. "Developments in home-care use. Policy and changing community-based care use by independent community-dwelling adults in the Netherlands," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 82-89.
    4. Urwin, Sean & Lau, Yiu-Shing & Grande, Gunn & Sutton, Matt, 2021. "The extent and predictors of discrepancy between provider and recipient reports of informal caregiving," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    5. Johannes Geyer & Thorben Korfhage, 2015. "Long‐term Care Insurance and Carers' Labor Supply – A Structural Model," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(9), pages 1178-1191, September.
    6. Rapp, Thomas & Ronchetti, Jérome & Sicsic, Jonathan, 2022. "Impact of formal care consumption on informal care use in Europe: What is happening at the beginning of dependency?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(7), pages 632-642.
    7. Christophe Courbage & Guillem Montoliu-Montes & Joël Wagner, 2020. "The effect of long-term care public benefits and insurance on informal care from outside the household: empirical evidence from Italy and Spain," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(8), pages 1131-1147, November.
    8. Lee, M-J & Kim, Y-S, 2011. "Effects of Informal Family Care on Formal Health Care: Zero-Inflated Endogenous Count for Censored Response," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 11/10, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    9. Yoko Niimi, 2016. "The “Costs” of informal care: an analysis of the impact of elderly care on caregivers’ subjective well-being in Japan," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 779-810, December.
    10. James Gaughan & Hugh Gravelle & Rita Santos & Luigi Siciliani, 2013. "Long term care provision, hospital length of stay and discharge destination for hip fracture and stroke patients," Working Papers 086cherp, Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
    11. Joan Costa-Font & Martin Karlsson & Henning Øien, 2015. "Informal Care and the Great Recession," CINCH Working Paper Series 1502, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Competent in Competition and Health, revised Feb 2015.
    12. Geyer, Johannes & Haan, Peter & Korfhage, Thorben, 2015. "Indirect fiscal effects of long-term care insurance," Ruhr Economic Papers 584, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    13. Xavier Flawinne & Mathieu Lefebvre & Sergio Perelman & Pierre Pestieau & Jérôme Schoenmaeckers, 2023. "Nursing homes and mortality in Europe: Uncertain causality," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 134-154, January.
    14. Thomas Barnay & Sandrine Juin, 2014. "Does care to dependent elderly people living at home increase their mental health?," TEPP Working Paper 2014-06, TEPP.
    15. Justina Klimaviciute & Pierre Pestieau, 2023. "The economics of long‐term care. An overview," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 1192-1213, September.
    16. Alexander L. Janus & Alison Koslowski, 2020. "Whose responsibility? Elder support norms regarding the provision and financing of assistance with daily activities across economically developed countries," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 95-108, March.
    17. Crawford, Rowena & Stoye, George & Zaranko, Ben, 2021. "Long-term care spending and hospital use among the older population in England," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    18. Ozbugday, Fatih Cemil & Tirgil, Abdullah & Kose, Elif Gul, 2020. "Efficiency changes in long-term care in OECD countries: A non-parametric Malmquist Index approach," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    19. repec:dau:papers:123456789/11722 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Sean Urwin & Yiu‐Shing Lau & Gunn Grande & Matt Sutton, 2023. "Informal caregiving, time use and experienced wellbeing," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(2), pages 356-374, February.
    21. Evelyn Korn & Matthias Wrede, 2012. "The effect of long term subsidies on female labor supply and fertility," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201243, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:73:y:2018:i:4:p:e24-e34.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.