IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/126347.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The hidden value of adult informal care in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Costa-Font, Joan
  • Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina

Abstract

The hidden value of adult informal care (IC) refers to the unaccounted value of informal care in overall costs of long‐term care(LTC) estimates. This paper estimates the net value of adult IC in Europe, drawing on a well‐being‐based methodology. We use an instrumental variable strategy and a longitudinal and cross‐country dataset to estimate the causal effect of the extensive and intensive margin of caregiving on subjective well‐being. We estimate the so‐called compensating surplus (CS), namely the income equivalent transfer, to compensate for the net disutility of caregiving. We show that IC reduces average subjective well‐being by about 1% compared to the mean (6% among co‐residential caregivers). Relative to a country's Gross Domestic Product(GDP), the value of IC ranges between 4.2% in France and 0.85% in Germany. Such relative value declines as the country's share of formal LTC spending increases. These results call for a reconsideration of the existing classifications of LTC regimes. We estimate that the average CS per hour for IC is 9.55€, with a range from 22€ per hour in Switzerland to 5€ per hour in Spain.Additionally, we estimate that the long‐term CS (estimated using an individual’s permanent income) tends to be lower than short‐term CS (estimated using an individual’s current income).

Suggested Citation

  • Costa-Font, Joan & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2025. "The hidden value of adult informal care in Europe," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 126347, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:126347
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126347/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    caregiving; compensating surplus; daughters; informal care; life satisfaction; the value of time; wellbeing method;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J17 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Value of Life; Foregone Income
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ehl:lserod:126347. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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.