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Informal care and the great recession

Costa-i-Font, Joan ORCID: 0000-0001-7174-7919, Karlsson, Martin and Øien, Henning (2015) Informal care and the great recession. CEP Discussion Papers (CEPDP1360). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

Macroeconomic downturns can have both an important impact on the availability of informal care and the affordability of formal long-term care. This paper investigates how the demand for and provision of informal care changed during and after the Great Recession in Europe. We use data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which includes a rich set of variables covering waves before and after the Great Recession. We find evidence of an increase in the availability of informal care and a reduction in the use of formal health services (doctor visits and hospital stays) after the economic downturn when controlling for year and country fixed effects. This trend is mainly driven by changes in care provision of individuals not cohabiting with the care recipient. We also find a small negative association between old-age health (measured be the number of problems with activities of daily living) and crisis severity. The results are robust to the inclusion of individual characteristics, individual-specific effects and region-specific time trends.

Item Type: Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/series.asp?...
Additional Information: ©2015 The Authors
Divisions: Social Policy
Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
R Medicine > RZ Other systems of medicine
JEL classification: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I18 - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
Date Deposited: 02 Jul 2015 11:07
Last Modified: 15 Sep 2023 23:36
Projects: 187986/V50
Funders: Economic and Social Research Council, Research Council of Norway
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/62606

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