The Well-Being Costs of Informal Caregiving

Michael D. Krämer and Wiebke Bleidorn

No 1214, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: How does informal care affect caregivers’ well-being? Theories and existing research provide conflicting answers to this question, partly because the temporal processes and conditions under which different aspects of well-being are affected are unknown. Here, we used longitudinal data from Dutch, German, and Australian representative panels (281,884 observations, 28,663 caregivers) to examine theoretically derived hypotheses about changes in caregivers’ life satisfaction, affective experiences, depression/anxiety, and loneliness. Overall, results provided evidence for negative well-being effects after the transition into a caregiver role, with more pronounced and longer-lasting well-being losses in women than men. We further found that well-being losses were larger with more time spent on caregiving, in both men and women. These results were robust across moderators of the caregiving context (care tasks, relationship with care recipient, and fulltime employment). Together, the present findings support predictions of stress theory and highlight lingering questions in theoretical frameworks of care-related well-being costs

Keywords: informal care; caregiving; well-being; life satisfaction; affect; mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 p.
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-hea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1214

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