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The Effect of Free Personal Care for the Elderly on Informal Caregiving

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  • Sarah Karlsberg Schaffer

Abstract

Population forecasters have predicted that the proportion of people in the UK aged 65 years and older will rise significantly in coming decades. This shift in demographics will put increasing pressure on the National Health Service and providers of social care. However, older people do not rely only on care provided by the state; informal care of the elderly is often supplied by family and friends. Therefore, the relationship between formal and informal care and the reaction of informal carers to institutional changes is an important policy issue. This study uses individual level data from the British Household Panel Survey to estimate the effects of the introduction of free personal care for the elderly in Scotland on informal care behaviour. As the change in policy applied only to Scotland, a natural experiment is formed allowing a difference‐in‐differences approach to be used. This paper finds that the introduction of the policy increased the probability of women supplying informal care by around six percentage points. In addition, for both sexes, it reports evidence of a shift away from the upper and lower tails towards the middle of the hours of care distribution as a result of the change in policy. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Karlsberg Schaffer, 2015. "The Effect of Free Personal Care for the Elderly on Informal Caregiving," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(S1), pages 104-117, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:24:y:2015:i:s1:p:104-117
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.3146
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Hoerger, Thomas J & Picone, Gabriel A & Sloan, Frank A, 1996. "Public Subsidies, Private Provision of Care and Living Arrangements of the Elderly," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(3), pages 428-440, August.
    2. Liliana E. Pezzin & Peter Kemper & James Reschovsky, 1996. "Does Publicly Provided Home Care Substitute for Family Care? Experimental Evidence with Endogenous Living Arrangements," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(3), pages 650-676.
    3. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769.
    4. Van Houtven, Courtney Harold & Norton, Edward C., 2004. "Informal care and health care use of older adults," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 1159-1180, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Joan COSTA‐FONT & Christophe Courbage & Katherine Swartz, 2015. "Financing Long‐Term Care: Ex Ante, Ex Post or Both?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(S1), pages 45-57, March.
    2. Bruce Hollingsworth & Asako Ohinata & Matteo Picchio & Ian Walker, 2022. "The Impacts of Free Universal Elderly Care on the Supply of Informal Care and Labour Supply," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(4), pages 933-960, August.
    3. Mark Kattenberg & Pieter Bakx, 2018. "Are substitute services a barrier to controlling long-term care expenditures?," CPB Discussion Paper 382, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    4. Costa-Font, Joan & Jiménez-Martín, Sergi & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2022. "Do Public Caregiving Subsidies and Supports affect the Provision of Care and Transfers?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    5. Mark Kattenberg & Pieter Bakx, 2018. "Are substitute services a barrier to controlling long-term care expenditures?," CPB Discussion Paper 382.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    6. Mark Kattenberg & Pieter Bakx, 2021. "Substitute services: a barrier to controlling long-term care expenditures," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 85-97, March.

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