Abstract
This article uses cross-sectional data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) database to test the effect of both long-term care (LTC) public benefits and insurance on the receipt of informal care provided by family members living outside the household in Italy and Spain. The choice of Italy and Spain comes from the fact that informal care is rather similar in these two countries while their respective public LTC financing systems are different. Our results support the hypothesis of LTC public support decreasing the receipt of informal care for Spain while reject it for Italy. They tend to confirm that the effect of public benefits on informal care depends on the typology of public coverage for LTC whereby access to proportional benefits negatively influences informal care receipt while access to cash benefits exerts a positive effect. Our results also suggest that private LTC insurance complements the public LTC financing system in place.
Highlights
The ageing of populations in most industrialised countries is accompanied by an increase in the needs for long-term care1 (LTC)
There is a significant overlap on the dependent variables Informal care and Informal care for instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), as more than 90% of those who receive help by family members living outside the household receive it as care for IADL
The choice of Italy and Spain comes from the fact that informal care is rather similar in these two countries while their respective public LTC financing systems are rather different
Summary
The ageing of populations in most industrialised countries is accompanied by an increase in the needs for long-term care (LTC). Ettner [5], Pezzin et al [6] and Stabile et al [7], using North American surveys and experimental data, show that increased availability of publicly financed home care is associated with an increase in its utilization and a decline in informal caregiving. This hypothesis has been questioned by Motel-Klingebiel et al [8], who show that the extent to which older people rely on family help is independent of the welfare estate regime in which they live
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