Non-kin informal care in Europe.

Abstract

Non-kin carers are often neglected in research on long-term informal care. This paper researched the influence of individual characteristics and long-term care systems on the likelihood of being a non-kin carer and the frequency of non-kin care provision. The data from the sixth wave, collected in 2015, of the SHARE project was used. The data consisted of 64977 respondents living in sixteen different European countries. To answer the research question logistic and ordinal regression analyses were performed. The results show that men are more likely to provide non-kin care than women, but women provide non-kin care at a higher frequency. The likelihood of being a non-kin carer decreases as age and health issues of the potential non-kin carer increase. Those who have a partner are less likely to be non-kin carers than those who do not and also provide care at a lower frequency. Those who are not employed are more likely to provide informal care and also provide care at a higher frequency than those who are employed. The higher educated are more likely to provide non-kin informal care, but the lower educated provide care at a higher frequency. In countries with generous state supported long-term care systems, the likelihood that a person is a non-kin carer is higher than in countries with less generous long-term care systems. The frequency of non-kin care provision in also higher in countries with generous long-term care systems. This means that the generosity of a long-term care system has a crowding-in effect on non-kin care.