Who Cares? Caregiver Well-being in Europe

This paper analyzes a multi-national sample comparing self-reported well-being of those who provide dependent care with that of noncaregivers. We pair individual-level data from the 2004 European Social Survey (ESS) for respondents in 22 nations (n=41,000+) with country-level measures of attitudinal support for coresidential familial caregiving (2007 Eurobarometer), old age and family public transfers (OECD Social Expenditures Database, 2014), and economic development (GDP). Using multi-level modeling, we examine the association between country-level coresidential familial attitudes and public spending and individual-level caregiver well-being, comparing effects by gender. We find that-(i) caregiving is differentially associated with well-being for men and women; (ii) female caregivers report worse well-being than male caregivers in countries with greater attitudinal support for coresidential familial caregiving; (iii) caregivers, regardless of gender, report better well-being in countries with more generous old age transfers. These findings are important in the context of Europe's population structure and the threats to public spending for dependent populations.