Care provision at the time of the Covid-19: who suffers most?

Elena Bassoli (), Agar Brugiavini and Irene Ferrari
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Elena Bassoli: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice

No 2021:10, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari"

Abstract: This paper focuses on the changes in care provision at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak by exploiting variation in lockdown policies across Europe. We use the SHARE-COVID-19 survey, which involves about 50000 respondents of age 50 and over in 26 countries, to investigate how the stringency of the policy measures have affected care provision. Our study is based on the linkage of the SHARE-COVID-19 data with an individual specific "stringency index" which measures the intensity of the restriction policies and the degree of individual's exposure. We find that older individuals, low-income individuals and people affected by limitations in everyday life faced a higher probability of receiving help because of the lockdown policies. Women and people in the age group 50-65 were more likely to provide help/care, but we also uncover a complex interaction with the labour market condition of caregivers. Lockdown policies hit hard individuals who were already receiving care as they experienced a form of rationing, both due to higher financial costs and travelling restrictions. Since these individuals are already among the most fragile in society, our evidence raises concern and calls for a re-design of the welfare system.

Keywords: Care provision; caregiving; caregiver; COVID-19; SHARE data; SHARE-COVID-19 questionnaire; lockdown policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 I14 I18 J14 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-eur and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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