title: Does country influence the health burden of informal care? An international comparison between Belgium and Great Britain.
abstract: The aim of this paper is to determine whether the association between the provision of informal care and the health status of caregivers is affected by the country of residence. We focus on two European countries, Belgium and Great Britain, and develop a methodology, which consists of matching a subset of areas from Britain with areas in Belgium that are demographically and socioeconomically similar. These pairs of areas are then used as fixed effects in logistic regressions of poor health. This allows us to take into account the influence of area type on health and to remove the influence of these local contextual characteristics from the estimated country effects. Results suggest that, although caregiving is more prevalent in Britain, the health burden associated with heavy caregiving activities is lower in Britain than in Belgium. This may be explained by the better targeting of long-term home care policies towards more severely dependent patients in Britain than in Belgium.
authors.affiliation: Université Catholique de Louvain, F.R.S.-F.N.R.S & CORE, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dujardin
authors.forename: Maria-Isabel
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Farfan-Portet
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Popham
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lorant
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001530:Belgium; D017028:Caregivers; D019352:Censuses; D017281:Cost of Illness; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012107:Research Design; D057566:Self Report; D012931:Social Environment; D006113:United Kingdom