The impact of formal care provision on informal care receipt for people over 75 in England

Eirini-Christina Saloniki; Olena Nizalova; Gintare Malisauskaite; Julien Forder

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0297157

The impact of formal care provision on informal care receipt for people over 75 in England

PLoS One. 2024 Feb 22;19(2):e0297157. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297157. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Eirini-Christina Saloniki^{1

2}, Olena Nizalova³, Gintare Malisauskaite³, Julien Forder³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Applied Health Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
² NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North Thames, London, United Kingdom.
³ Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom.

Abstract

In this study, we examine the relationship between formal care provision and informal care receipt from within the household for people over 75 years old using data from the British Household Panel Survey between 1991 and 2009. To address potential concerns about endogeneity of formal care we use a 'spatial lag' instrumental variable. We find a negative and statistically significant effect of formal care provision on informal care receipt from within the household, suggesting a substantial degree of substitutability between these two modes of care. These findings provide grounds for estimates of savings in the cost of informal care enabled by spending on formal care, which is important in light of the effects of the caregiving burden and associated responsibilities on carer's labour market participation.

Copyright: © 2024 Saloniki et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

MeSH terms

Aged
Caregivers*
England
Family Characteristics
Humans
Patient Care*

Grants and funding

This paper is based on independent research commissioned and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Policy Research Programme through its core support to the Adult Social Care Policy Research Unit (PR-PRU-1217-21101). This work started as part of the NIHR Policy Research Unit in the Economics of Social and Health Care (ESHCRU I). The views expressed are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The data used in this research were made available through the UK Data Service. The data were originally collected by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. Neither the original data collectors of the data nor the archive bear any responsibility for the analysis and interpretations presented here.