Spousal care-giving arrangements in Europe. The role of gender, socio-economic status and the welfare state

Abstract

Spouses (and partners) are the most important source of care in old age. Informal care for frail spouses is provided by both sexes and across all socio-economic backgrounds and welfare policy contexts. There are, however, interesting differences as to whether spouses care alone, receive informal support from other family members or formal support from professional helpers, or outsource the care of their spouse completely. The present article contributes to the literature by differentiating between solo spousal care-giving and shared or outsourced care-giving arrangements, as well as between formal and informal care support. Moreover, we show how care-giving arrangements vary with gender, socio-economic status and welfare policy. Adding to previous research, we compare 17 countries and their expenditures on two elder-care schemes: Cash-for-Care and Care-in-Kind. The empirical analyses draw on the most recent wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data from 2015. Our results show that men have a higher propensity to share care-giving than women, albeit only with informal supporters. As expected, welfare policy plays a role insofar as higher expenditure on Cash-for-Care schemes encourage informally outsourced care-giving arrangements, whereas Care-in-Kind reduce the likelihood for informally shared or outsourced care-giving arrangements. Moreover, the influence of these welfare policy measures differs between individuals of different socio-economic status but not between men and women.

An exploration of the experiences of informal carers supporting a relative living with dementia during and after the move to technology-enriched supported accommodation

“…Informal or family care-givers are usually a family member, often a spouse or friend, generally female, who assumes the overall caring responsibility for a person experiencing daily difficulties due to a debilitating condition, physical, cognitive or emotional, including dementia (Brodaty and Donkin, 2009; Alzheimer's Society, 2015; Carers Trust, 2015; Bertogg and Strauss, 2018). Informal care-giving will generally have a relational dimension, and whilst often the spouse is the main carer, other family members often provide a significant contribution (McDonnell and Ryan, 2014).…”

Experiences of oldest-old caregivers whose partner is approaching end-of-life: A mixed-method systematic review and narrative synthesis

“…Another explanation for their unaided caring may be that their partner is not being offered services because they are lower priority given their age and non-malignant conditions [17]. More research is needed in this area, including the views of service providers [75] as well as from a gendered perspective given wider evidence that indicates men tend to receive more formal and informal support whilst caring than women [30,108].…”

Time for care: exploring time use by carers of older people

“…As Table 1 shows, those recruited fell into all of these categories. The categories were chosen because the literature suggested that these factors were important for influencing experiences of caring: we referred above to the relevance of employment and spatial distribution of families, and the salience of gender has been widely considered (Bertogg and Strauss, 2020). Table 1 provides an overview of the study participants.…”