Hendrik Schmitz and Matthias Westphal Short - and Medium - term Eff ects of Informal Care Provision on Health

This paper estimates the eff ect of informal care provision on female caregiver’s health. We use data from the German Socio-economic Panel and assess eff ects up to seven years after care provision. A simulation-based sensitivity analysis scrutinizes the sensitivity of the results with respect to potential deviations from the conditional independence assumption in the regression adjusted matching approach. The results suggest that there is a considerable short-term eff ect of informal care provision on mental health which fades out over time. Five years after care provision there are no signifi cant eff ects left. Both shortand medium-term eff ects on physical health are much smaller and insignifi cant throughout. JEL Classifi cation: I10, I18, C21, J14