background informal payments for health care, which are common in many countries, can have negative effects on health care access, equity and health status as they lead people to forgo or delay seeking care, or to sell assets to pay for care. many countries are putting reforms in place with the aim of reducing informal payments. in order to be successful, such policies should be informed by the...

BACKGROUND Transfers of money and help with daily activities by family and friends are important sources of support for older people and contribute to their well being. On the other hand, older adults are not only recipients of support but also important providers of support and financial transfers as giving and receiving are often reciprocal. For this, it is important to understand the determi...

BACKGROUND Faced with increased public spending for care, knowledge of the determinants of the choices between informal and formal care is of particular importance for estimating the need for care in the future. METHODS Using a representative sample of Spanish dependent elderly from the Disabilities, Independence and Dependency Situations Survey (DIDSS) 2008, we compare the factors associated...

The Effects of Cooperation: A Structural Model of Siblings’ Caregiving Interactions This paper analyzes the decision making process of adult children to provide informal care to their parents. First, we develop a structural model to explain the amount of time that only children (without siblings) spend on providing care, taking into account opportunity costs in terms of time and money. The mode...

This report describes the organisation of the Belgian long-term care system. It can be characterised as a mixed system, with extensive public care provision and the substantial support of informal care provided mainly within the family. While the current volume and quality of services appears to be adequate, the future increase in the number of dependent elderly persons over the next two decade...

Data from a comparative study of 1975 African American, Puerto Rican, and non-Hispanic White persons age 60 and older in a large Northeastern city were used to investigate the relative contribution of ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) to explaining differences in the need for and receipt of informal care. It was hypothesized that differences in disability would be related largely to SES,...

Informal care may substitute for formal long-term care that is often publicly funded or subsidized. The costs of informal caregiving are borne by the caregiver and may consist of worse health outcomes and, if the caregiver has not retired, worse labor market outcomes. We estimate the impact of providing informal care to one's partner on the caregiver's health using data from the Survey of Healt...

INTRODUCTION Relationships between people with health problems and their partners, families and friends are usually described as 'informal care'. Using a qualitative examination of older people's descriptions of their relationships with partners or other significant friends or relatives at times of change in health and mobility (walking), we questioned whether 'informal care' is an appropriate ...

Around 14% of the UK labour force has informal care responsibilities and almost everyone in society will be an informal carer in their lifetime. A well-known fact in the small economic literature on informal care is the apparent negative relation between care responsibilities and labour market participation. Yet, caring and labour market participation may be endogenous. Using an instrumental va...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to update the previous estimate of the worldwide cost of dementia in 2005 to 2009. METHODS The cost model is based on prevalence estimates, country and region-specific data on Gross Domestic Product per person and average wage, with results from previously published cost-of-illness studies in different countries. Prevalence figures are updated to 2009 ...