title: Informal caring-time and caregiver satisfaction.
abstract: This paper examines the role of care decision processes on informal caring-time choices. We focus on three care decisions: the caregiver's own decision, a family decision and a recipient request. Results show that informal caregivers, engaged in care activities as a result of a family decision, are more likely to devote more than 5 h to care activities, even after allowing for endogeneity. Our findings are robust to controlling for a large number of socio-demographic characteristics, including care recipient and caregiver characteristics. Supplemental analysis, developed to explore whether care arrangements are related to informal caregiver's satisfaction, indicates that the family decision heavily penalizes informal caregivers. Given the importance of informal care activities in reducing health care costs, our findings imply that care decision processes should be taken into consideration when formulating health care policies.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Análisis Económico, Universidad de Zaragoza, Gran Vía 2, 50005, Zaragoza, Spain. mmarcen@unizar.es
authors.forename: Miriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Marcén
authors.forename: José Alberto
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Molina
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D003657:Decision Making; D005195:Family Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors