Informal caring in England and Wales – Stability and transition between 2001 and 2011

Abstract

Informal caring is of significant and increasing importance in the context of an ageing population, growing pressures on public finances, and increasing life expectancy at older ages. A growing body of research has examined the characteristics associated with informal care provision, as well as the impact of caring for the carer's physical and mental health, and their economic activity. However, only a relatively small body of literature has focused on the study of 'repeat' or continuous caring over time, and the factors associated with such trajectories. In 2001, for the first time, the United Kingdom census asked about provision of informal care, enabling identification of the prevalence of informal caregiving at a national level. This paper follows up informal carers from the 2001 Census in order to examine their characteristics and circumstances 10 years later using a nationally representative 1% sample of linked census data for England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study. The analysis classifies the range of possible combinations of caring and non-caring roles between 2001 and 2011, focusing on the characteristics of those who were providing care at one, or both, time points. Among other results, the analysis identified that, among those who were carers in 2001, caring again in, or continuing to care until, 2011 was associated with being female, aged between 45 and 54 years in 2011, looking after the home, and providing care for 50 hours or more per week in 2001. Such results contribute to our understanding of a particular group of informal carers and provide a more nuanced picture of informal care provision at different stages of the life course.

The Demography of Multigenerational Caregiving: A Critical Aspect of the Gendered Life Course

“…Our results build on numerous published studies on different age groups, cohorts, and places, which have documented that women are more likely than men to be caring at each life course stage (Dukhovnov and Zagheni 2015;Moen et al 1994;Robards, Vlachantoni, and Evandrou 2015), with some exceptions at the end of the life course (OECD 2011). Ours is the first study to use multicountry national-level data to clearly document the full extent of the gendered life course of caregiving roles by direction and type of care given.…”

Caught in the middle in mid-life: provision of care across multiple generations

“…The intensity of care-giving, measured in hours of care provided per week, was tested in preliminary analysis as a continuous variable, producing similar results as when using a categorical variable. However, following previous studies (Robards et al , 2015; Gomez-Leon et al ., 2019), the categorical variable with the following categories was used in the final analysis: not caring, nine or less hours per week, 10–19 hours per week, 20+ hours per week for the first set of analysis; and not caring, nine or less hours per week, 10+ hours per week for the second set of analysis, which combined the last two categories previously mentioned, due to the low sample size in the 20+ hours per week category to be included in the logistic models.…”

“…Meanwhile, the provision of long-term care to older people continues to rely heavily on informal carers, most of whom are family members. Research using data from the 2011 Census of England and Wales found that the prevalence of providing care peaks around ages 45–54 for women and 45–64 for men, coinciding with the lifecourse stages currently being targeted in efforts to extend working lives (Robards et al , 2015; Department for Work and Pensions, 2017).…”

The dynamics of social care and employment in mid-life

“…However, some similarities and differences can be highlighted. Previous studies have found a negative impact of intense care on employment, using a threshold of 20 or 50 hours or more per week of care provision (Heitmueller 2007; Robards et al 2015; Trukeschitz et al 2013; Vlachantoni 2010). Others have found that even provision of care at the lower threshold of ten hours or more per week negatively affects the carer's employment (King and Pickard 2013; Van Houtven, Coe and Skira 2013).…”

“…In countries with diverse family arrangements and policies on the provision of social care such as England, Spain and the United States of America (USA), research has indicated that it is primarily the adult children who provide informal care to their older parents (Sole-Auro and Crimmins 2014). The prevalence of such care-giving peaks in mid-life, between ages 45–64 (Robards et al 2015).…”