How Siblings Share Parental Care: Theory and Evidence from Europe

Yukihiro Nishimura, Pierre Pestieau, Jerome Schoenmaeckers and Nikolaos Theodoropoulos

No 13121, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We examine how two adult siblings share the care of an ageing parent, combining a theoretical model with evidence from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The model distinguishes how siblings make decisions from how their care contributions combine. When their contributions are interchangeable, care can be concentrated on the sibling with the lower effective cost. When their contributions are complementary, both siblings may provide care even if they decide independently. In the preferred specification, care by one sibling is associated with a 30.9 percentage-point higher probability that the other provides care. Formal home care is positively associated with sibling participation, while help from other informal caregivers is negatively associated with it. The positive association between siblings’ contributions is consistent with mutually reinforcing care, although the estimates cannot establish whether siblings coordinate their decisions.

Keywords: formal and informal care; long term care; location decision; complementarity; SHARE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I13 I18 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13121

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