Support to the Elderly and Caring Regimes: An Analysis of Patterns of Informal Support and their Determinants in Six European Countries

Abstract

Recent social, demographic and policy changes have led scholars and policy makers to pay increasing attention to the evolution of care systems in Europe and to their diverging (or converging) patterns. However, t he analysis of caring regimes is complicated by the fact that these are defined as the interplay between three institutions and their settings and characteristics: the family and informal support networks; the labour market and private offer of care services; the State and public health and long-term care policies, and educational systems. The present chapter pays special attention to the analysis of the role of the first of these institutions in shaping care regimes — thus concentrating on patterns of informal support and their determinants across Europe. In particular, the focus here is on the analysis of informal support provided to the elderly in six European countries: Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain.1 The relation between informal and formal support will also be analysed.2