Abstract
BackgroundOver the past decades, informal care has increased in most OECD-countries. Informal care is costly to caregivers and to society in the form of lost income and direct costs of providing care. Existing evidence suggests that providing informal care affects caregivers’ overall health. However, estimates of the social costs of informal care based on national data on individuals are currently scarce.ObjectiveThis study contributes to the existing evidence on the costs of informal care by estimating the direct and indirect costs to caregivers using a purposive national household survey from Sweden.MethodsAdopting a bottom-up, prevalence approach, the direct and indirect costs are estimated using the survey data and the value of working time and leisure time from existing sources.ResultsThe results suggest that around 15% of the adult population of Sweden provide informal care and that such care costs around SEK 152 billion per year (around 3% of GDP; USD 16,3 billion; EUR 14,5 billion), or SEK 128000 per caregiver. Around 55% of costs are in the form of income loss to caregivers. The largest cost items are reduced work hours and direct costs of providing informal care. Replacing informal caregivers with professional care providers would be costly at around SEK 193,6 billion per year.ConclusionsFindings indicate that, even in a country with a relatively generous welfare system, significant resources are allocated toward providing informal care. The costing analysis suggests that effective support initiatives to ease the burden of informal caregivers may be cost-effective.
Highlights
Over the past decades, informal care has increased in most OECD-countries
The results suggest that around 15% of the adult population of Sweden provide informal care and that such care costs around Swedish kronor (SEK) 152 billion per year, or SEK 128000 per caregiver
Drawing on the findings of a national, cross-sectional survey implemented in 2019, this study seeks to estimate the total costs of informal care in Sweden
Summary
Informal care has increased in most OECD-countries. Informal care is costly to caregivers and to society in the form of lost income and direct costs of providing care. Existing evidence suggests that providing informal care affects caregivers’ overall health. Over the past several decades the provision of informal care has increased in most OECD-countries. Estimates of the share of the population that provides informal care vary across countries and range between 10% and 40% of the total population [1, 2]. Regardless of the exact form of informal care, existing evidence suggests that such type of care may impose a significant economic burden on the caregiver. Including the cost of informal care in economic evaluations of health care interventions and in cost of illness studies has been suggested to be critical for the range of estimates that analysts arrive at as excluding such costs may risk underestimating the true cost and benefits of interventions and burdens of disease [10, 11]. Results from Sweden may be of interest in an international context given the country’s relatively comprehensive social welfare system that includes various types of social care to the elderly and to persons living with some disability [12]
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