Cash For Care Research Articles

Impact Evaluation of Cash-For-Care in Latin America's New Long-Term Care Policies: A Randomized Controlled Trial Pilot Study in Costa Rica.

Latin America is aging rapidly. Thus, governments in the region are reformulating their social protection policies. In 2022, Costa Rica passed a national long-term care law. A discussion developed on how to provide such care, whether through public or private in-kind benefits or cash-for-care (CfC) to beneficiaries. CfC has been used in developed countries with various outcomes. However, there are still no evaluations of its effects in middle-income countries. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of CfC pilot study on female caregivers in a middle-income country. The expectations of the program were to find positive effects of CfC on caregivers. After conducting a literature review, we developed four domains of analysis: labor market participation, time for personal activities, use of CfC, and caregiver burnout. The results indicate that CfC has no significant impact on caregivers' integration into the labor market, or ability to have leisure time. However, there was a positive effect on the funding of basic needs and mitigation of factors predicting burnout.

Long-Term Care in Turkey: Towards a Growing Crisis of Aged Care

Turkey exemplifies a typical familialistic long-term care regime as having a negligible degree of state and market participation in the active delivery of aged care services. However, demographic and economic changes necessitate a transition towards a new type of care regime. An upward shift in the population’s age structure and increasing economic strains weaken the caregiving capacities of Turkish families. This paper analyzes demographic and economic factors within a demand-supply framework to question the future sustainability of the existing care regime. It presents descriptive evidence for a growing crisis of aged care in Turkey by focusing on long-term care. It also assesses the implications of a cash-for-care (CfC) scheme devised by the government to keep the care provision of disabled older people within the family sphere. Overall, this paper contributes to the ongoing debates on the distribution of aged care responsibilities by conceptualizing the proposed solution as semi-familialized care–namely, a set of alternative strategies to overcome the aged care challenges families face in Turkey. The main pillars of this proposal are much greater involvement of the state in aged care, together with some support services and entitlements granted to the family caregivers.

Cash-for-Care Use and Union Dissolution in Finland.

ObjectiveThis study examines how the receipt of the cash‐for‐care (CFC) benefit affects short‐ and long‐term risks of union dissolution.BackgroundSeveral theories predict that couples' gendered division of labor decreases their risk of separation, either due to increased partnership satisfaction or because it establishes economic dependency. Family policies such as the Finnish CFC benefit, which is paid if a young child does not attend public daycare, may encourage such a gendered division of labor, at least temporarily.MethodUsing Finnish register data, this study analyzes the first childbearing unions of 38,093 couples between 1987 and 2009. Discrete‐time event history analyses and fixed effects models for nonrepeated events are applied.ResultsThe results suggest a lower separation risk while the benefit is received as compared to couples who do not use it, but no effect in the long‐term. Fixed effects models that control for selection into CFC indicate postponement of separation until after take‐up. Higher‐income mothers show a stronger postponement effect, possibly due to greater income following leave.ConclusionCFC use, which signals a temporary gendered division of labor and losses in mothers' earnings, predicts a lower separation risk during receipt of the benefit, but not beyond.ImplicationsPolicies that affect the division of paid and unpaid labor at best only temporarily reduce dissolution risks.

Trap or opportunity—What role does geography play in the use of cash for childcare?

AbstractAfter a heated debate, the Norwegian parliament voted for the introduction of Cash‐for‐Care (CFC) in 1997, a programme designed to give parents more opportunities to plan childcare. The pro‐CFC faction claimed that the reform would give parents more time with their children, whereas CFC opponents pointed to the increased risks of creating gender traps and discouraging women from returning to work. Earlier studies have suggested that the socio‐economic dimensions are important for understanding the use of CFC. However, the role of geography in the implementation of CFC has not been studied, though it is well‐known that the residential context is important to understand how parents choose to organize childcare. Our study is designed to examine the use of CFC in order to determine how much can be attributed to socio‐economic factors and how much can be attributed to geography. We focus on mothers who gave birth to their first child in 2009 and follow their life course through 2011. We use a unique and comprehensive longitudinal data set with annual economic, demographic, and geographical information that includes all mothers residing in Norway during the study period. We find that the use of CFC is strongly correlated with several socio‐economic variables and that there are also strong geographical factors, local and regional, affecting the choice to use CFC.

Cash for care and care employment: (Missing) debates and realities

AbstractThe introduction of cash‐for‐care (CfC) schemes in different European countries over the last years has responded to a plurality of strategies aimed at attending the rising demand and increasing costs of the long‐term care needs of an ageing population. The specific system of care provision in each country shaped the response given to those challenges, as well as the room for manoeuvre for policymakers when trying to transform the domain of care into a sphere where markets may play a larger role, partly relieving families, and also the state, from these responsibilities. Policy debates and scholarly analyses largely overlooked the contribution of these schemes to the creation and shaping of employment. This article provides a comparative analysis of how CfC‐based policies entail—alongside the regulation of informal care—a(n implicit or explicit) connection with care employment and may contribute to structuring employment relations in this sector. It looks jointly at the specific features of CfC and at the institutional context—welfare regime—in which they are embedded in order to assess the extent to which these schemes contributed (generally unintendedly) to a transformation of the care employment size and features in seven European countries.

Coverage versus generosity: Comparing eligibility and need assessment in six cash‐for‐care programmes

AbstractThis paper investigates the potential trade‐offs between extension of coverage and adequate generosity in cash‐for‐care (CfC) programmes in six European countries (Austria, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Spain), which are characterised by different configurations of CfC programmes. Building on an empirical analysis of the eligibility rules, of the regulation applied to classify beneficiaries according to their level of dependency, and the ways CfC benefits are distributed among them, it becomes clear that these programmes differ substantially in terms of coverage and generosity. Such differences reflect the variety of ways by which universalism, selectivity, and adequacy are built up together throughout Europe.

Can a cash transfer to families change fertility behaviour?

Objective: This paper assesses the much-disputed relationship between family policy and fertility, and cash transfers and fertility in particular. Methods: We take advantage of a cash-for-care (CFC) policy introduced in Norway in 1998, and compare the subsequent fertility behaviour of eligible and ineligible mothers over a four-year period. We estimate linear models assessing both the occurrence and timing of second births, relying on a rich set of covariates and a sensitivity analysis to ensure the robustness of our results. Results: Contrary to theoretical expectations, the results show that CFC-eligible mothers had a slower progression to second births and lower short-term fertility. The patterns differ between different groups of mothers, and the decline in subsequent childbearing is only statistically significant among mothers with upper secondary (but not higher) education and part-time or full-time employment. We find no increase in short-term fertility in any group of mothers, and suggest that this pattern may be driven by an interaction between the CFC benefit and the already established Norwegian parental leave scheme. Contribution: The paper demonstrates how policy changes may indeed be associated with changes in fertility behaviour, and that this association may run in theoretically unexpected directions when a given policy is implemented in a wider policy framework. Moreover, it demonstrates how eligible parents may differ in their response to policies depending on the policy’s income effect and the parents’ opportunity costs of childbearing.

The Effect of a Family Policy Reform on Mother’s Pay: A Natural Experiment Approach

All parents in Norway with children aged one to three, who do not attend publicly subsidised day care, are entitled to a cash-for-care (CFC) subsidy. Studies have shown that the reform has reduced mother’s labour supply. In this paper we analyse wage effects of the reform. We put forward a framework for evaluating reforms when reforms are uniformly and equally accessible nation-wide. First, running a simple Difference in differences (DD) analysis, results suggest that the CFC reform has reduced the mother’s wages. However, after controlling for “the age of the child” effect, by running a triple difference approach, we no longer find any evidence of negative wage effects.

Labour supply effects of a cash-for-care subsidy

From 1999, all parents in Norway with children aged one to three, who did not attend publicly subsidised daycare, became eligible for a cash-for-care (CFC) subsidy. One effect of the CFC-subsidy was to increase in the relative price of external child care. This article analyses whether the CFC-subsidy has led to a reduction in the labour supply of mothers. A framework for evaluating policy reforms when reforms are equally and nation-wide accessible is put forward. The results show that the CFC-subsidy has reduced women’s labour supply. The results are sustained after controlling for contemporaneous macroeconomic shocks, using a triple difference approach.