Differences in the effects of informal family caregiving on health and life satisfaction between wives and husbands as caregivers

We analyze whether or not informal family caregiving worsens caregivers’ health and life satisfaction among Japanese married middle‐aged and elderly individuals from the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement. Unlike previous studies, we distinguish between wives and husbands as caregivers and between one's own and one's spouse's parents as care recipients. We find women's depressive state is negatively associated with caregiving for spousal parents both in our instrumental variable estimations and fixed‐effect panel analysis, and also find women's life satisfaction is negatively associated with caregiving for spousal parents in our fixed‐effect panel analysis, though only marginally so. However, as our results are marginally significant, caregiving for either own or spousal parents does not seem to matter much for caregiver's health or life satisfaction. All that can be said for certain in our paper is that men's subjective health, depressive state, and life satisfaction are generally less sensitive to informal care, for both spousal and own parents, than that of women.     

Does providing informal elderly care hasten retirement? Evidence from Japan

This paper examines the implications of providing care to elderly parents for adult children's retirement plans using micro data from a Japanese survey. We find no significant effect of caregiving on family caregivers’ planned retirement age if we do not take into account caregiving intensity but find a negative and significant effect on retirement plans for intensive caregivers, particularly among women. These findings suggest that relying on family members to provide elderly care can pose a serious challenge to the ongoing efforts of the government to promote the labor supply of women and the elderly as a way of addressing the shrinkage of the working‐age population in Japan. The estimation results suggest that ensuring access to formal care services can help family members reconcile their paid work with caregiving requirements, thereby alleviating the adverse effect of caregiving on their retirement plans. The results also suggest that the financial burden of formal care services could require caregivers to postpone retirement in some cases.     

我国城镇已婚妇女照料父母与自评健康的关系研究

我国老年人以非正式照料为主,妇女承担了主要的照料责任。政府减少对非正式老年照料的支持以及老年人口的快速增长将会加重家庭中女性的照料负担。利用1997、2000、2004和2006年中国营养与健康调查(CHNS)数据和Ordered Probit模型来研究城镇已婚妇女照料父母及其自评健康的关系。在我国城镇,与不照料父母相比,照料父母的已婚妇女更倾向于报告较差的健康水平,并且"自评健康状况非常好"的概率减小,而"自评健康状况一般"的概率增大。应该关注日益繁重的照料责任,以及工作与家庭照料之间的激烈竞争可能给妇女的心理、身体和社会福利带来的负面影响。     

An extended household model of eldercare by children and children‐in‐law based on Far‐Eastern traditions

A model of informal caregiving is presented in which decisions are made by extended households including parents and children. An extended household possibly has both a demand and a supply of elder caregiving by children‐in‐law. A patrilocal version of the model, inspired from traditional Chinese marriage institutions adopted by a number of countries in the Far East, leads to derived demands for caregiving by daughters‐in‐law and supplies of caregiving by families of daughters. Market equilibrium prices for caregiving by children‐in‐law are established. These prices then provide incentives to which individual households respond. Payments can be made during, before, or after marriage. The model can throw light on gender differences in marital happiness, differences in the impact of eldercare on the health of in‐family caregivers and on their happiness, and East/West and regional differences in caregiving obligations of family members. It also suggests that these geographic differentials may be related to variation in family institutions, including variation in the prevalence of dowry and brideprice. The policy relevance of the model is discussed.     

成年子女照料老年父母的积极体验研究

通过对14位成年子女照料者的深度访谈,揭示了成年子女照料者在照料老年父母过程中的种种积极体验,例如欣慰和满足、快乐与亲密的感觉,获得思想成熟和个人价值的实现等。这些积极的照料体验不仅强化着成年子女的照料责任感,也帮助他们在一定程度上对抗和克服照料压力。研究发现有助于人们获得关于家庭照料者角色的更为全面的认识,有利于老年人及其家庭照料者社会支持和服务工作的开展。     

Risk management,housing and stockholding

This article investigates the possible explanations of the stockholding puzzle by focusing on housing and other uninsurable risks (associated with income, health and business). Taking the French household wealth survey (Patrimoine 2004, French National Statistical Institute), we find that the share of financial wealth invested in stocks depends on transaction and information costs, risk aversion, exposure to real estate risk and, to a lesser extent, labour market risk. These results are obtained by controlling for endogenous home ownership status.     

Complex home care: part III--economic impact on family caregiver quality of life and patients' clinical outcomes

Family caregivers perform a significant role in the care of patients with chronic illnesses and prescribed life-long complex home care treatments. Both quantitative and qualitative data from this study suggest the mental health burdens and financial costs of home parenteral nutrition (HPN) caregiving are extensive. In this study, the variability in HPN out-of-pocket expenses and the uncertainty of incurring such extensive costs created additional financial worries within already stressed families. Based on these data, interventions to improve caregivers' sleepiness, depression, and physical health could be hypothesized to improve both patients' and caregivers' quality of life and reduce the frequency of patients' catheter-related infections. These specific nursing interventions also could improve caregiver health and subsequently reduce the costs of caregivers' health care.     

The caregiving responsibilities of retirees: what are they and how do they affect retirees’ well-being?

Using data from the 2010 and 2012 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) and the associated Well-being Modules (WBM), this article examines how caregiving affects the well-being of retirees who are caregivers. Different caregiving activities are examined, including caring for household adults, caring for non-household adults, and caring for children. Different aspects of well-being are examined, including how meaningful respondents find their activities and how happy, sad, tired, in pain, and stressed their activities make them. The results show that, controlling for selection into caregiving, most caregiving negatively affects the well-being of retirees. This suggests that policies that remove some of the caregiving burden from retirees would increase their well-being.     

Precautionary Savings in Mexico: Evidence From the Mexican Health and Aging Study

Precautionary saving is the additional saving done by individuals to protect them financially in situations of uncertainty and reduce their vulnerability for negative shocks that may affect their consumption levels. This paper investigates the existence and extent of savings motivated by precaution in Mexico for people aged between 50 and 75, using data from the Mexican Health and Ageing Study 2003. The empirical strategy is based on a test of the direct relationship between the accumulated wealth and the uncertainty generated by the social security status, in particular the availability of health insurance, accounting also for the expectation to receive a retirement pension. The endogeneity‐corrected estimates do not yield results that unequivocally support the existence of private savings as a risk protection mechanism, implying that the public protection system has an important role in reducing the vulnerability of the population studied.     

Uninsured idiosyncratic investment risk and aggregate saving

This paper augments the neoclassical growth model to study the macroeconomic effects of uninsured idiosyncratic investment, or capital-income, risk. Under standard assumptions for preferences and technologies, individual policy rules are linear in individual wealth, ensuring that the equilibrium dynamics for aggregate quantities and prices are independent of the wealth distribution. The analysis thus remains highly tractable despite the incompleteness of markets. As compared to complete markets, the steady state is characterized by both a lower interest rate and a lower capital stock when the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is higher than the fraction of private equity in total wealth. For empirically plausible parameterizations, this condition is easily satisfied, and the reduction in aggregate saving and income is quantitatively significant. These findings contrast with Bewley models, where idiosyncratic labor-income risk leads to higher aggregate saving and income.     

老年人日常照料角色介入的差序格局研究

老年人日常照料是老年人养老的核心问题之一。运用"2006年中国城乡老年人口状况追踪调查"数据对老年人日常照料角色介入的差序格局进行研究。从宏观上看,传统的差序格局仍然存在,但随着社会存在的变化差序格局随之变化,且由于家庭养老人力资源的急剧下降,这种格局存在进一步被打破的趋势。可以预见,处于差序格局最边缘的社会圈层将成为未来老年人照料的重要力量。对老年人日常照料差序格局的城乡化差异作了比较。     

健康问题研究中农户财富状况指标的构建——基于四川农户调查数据的分析

构建有效的农户财富状况指标是研究农村贫困和疾病问题的基础。本文利用一组数据,参照可持续生计的分析框架,构建以资产替代收入和消费来反映农户财富状况的指标。研究发现,农户财富状况指标比通常所用的村干部对农户经济状况的主观评价、农户收入及消费指标更能反映农户财富的动态状况;农户财富状况很大程度上依赖于农户的人力资本发展。本文最后对构建的农户财富状况指标优缺点及其在健康问题研究中的运用进行了讨论。     

Precautionary savings of agents with heterogeneous risk aversion

This article focuses on the estimation of the importance of the precautionary motive in the wealth accumulation decision. We use the micro data set of the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) Household Survey (DHS) (CentERdata, Tilburg University), a Dutch household survey containing information on wealth, a subjective measure of income uncertainty and subjective qualitative measures of risk aversion. We find that only a small share of wealth is accumulated for the precautionary motive by the Dutch households. This share of wealth is constant across assets with different degrees of liquidity. The economic downturn of the period 2008 to 2010 seems to affect risk attitudes and precautionary saving. Our findings also suggest that the more risk-averse individuals are those who hold less savings.     

Globalization and household saving: is there a link?

This article proposes that globalization can affect household saving in the long run in a number of ways. Social interactions between different cultures can induce value changes, which can result in shifts in consumption and saving behaviour. International trade allows consumers to have easier access to status goods, stimulating consumption and dampening saving. Extending from Veblen’s conspicuous consumption theory, saving may also decrease when globalization leads to greater population mobility and fosters urbanization, thus enhancing the importance of consumption as a way to display wealth. In addition, financial globalization reduces credit constraints and allows households to save less. Using cross-country data from the United Nations (UN), the OECD, and other sources, this article finds evidence that household saving declines as globalization deepens, especially in the social and cultural dimensions.     

Precautionary wealth accumulation: evidence from Canadian microdata

Abstract .  This paper estimates the effect of labour income uncertainty on wealth accumulation using two data sources. Wealth information is obtained from the master files of the new Canadian Survey of Financial Security 1999 (SFS). Labour income risk proxies are constucted by industry using the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) between 1996 and 2001. The empirical results suggest the presence of a strong precautionary saving motive among Canadian households for broad definitions of wealth. Furthermore, consistent with the buffer-stock-saving model, the level of precautionary funds significantly increases when households face liquidity constraints.     

DYNAMIC STATUS EFFECTS,SAVINGS, AND INCOME INEQUALITY

This article advances the hypothesis that the intensity of status preferences depends negatively on the average wealth of society (endogenous dynamic status effect), in accordance with empirical evidence. Our theory replicates the contradictory historical facts of an increasing saving rate along with declining returns to capital over time. By affecting the dynamics of the saving rate, the dynamic status effect raises inequality, thereby providing a behavioral mechanism for the observed diverse dynamics of income inequality across countries. In countries in which the dynamic status effect is strong (weak), inequality rises (declines) over time in response to a positive productivity shock.     

The impact of the correlation between health expenditure and survival probability on the demand for insurance

This paper studies the effects of health shocks on the demand for health insurance and annuities, along with precautionary saving in a dynamic life-cycle model. I argue that when the health shock can simultaneously increase health expenses and reduce longevity, rational agents would neither fully insure their uncertain health expenses nor fully annuitize their wealth because the correlation between health expenses and longevity provides a self-insurance channel for both uncertainties. That is, when the agent is hit by a health shock (which simultaneously increases health expenses and reduces longevity), she can use the resources originally saved for consumption in the reduced period of life to pay for the increased health expenses. Since the two uncertainties partially offset each other, the precautionary saving generated in the model should be smaller than in a standard model without the correlation between health expenses and longevity. In a quantitative life-cycle model calibrated using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey dataset, I find that the health expenses are highly correlated with the survival probabilities, and this correlation significantly reduces the demand for actuarially fair health insurance, while its impact on the demand for annuities and precautionary saving is relatively small.     

Malnutrition in the shadow of economic growth

We formulate the consumption and wealth accumulation behavior for low‐income agents who are concerned with their relative income with respect to a reference group. Using a dynamic consumption and saving model, we show the conditions under which low‐income and status‐seeking individuals accumulate more wealth and consume less of a nutritious good than the levels in the absence of status‐seeking behavior. Our results suggest that malnutrition and economic growth may go hand in hand in developing economies.     

上海高龄体弱老人家庭亲属照顾者的生活满意度:照顾资源的作用

对上海城区697对75岁及以上的体弱老人及其家庭亲属照顾者作了抽样调查和统计分析。家庭亲属照顾者的照顾资源是影响高龄体弱老人生活满意度的显著因素。经济资源充分、家庭和朋友支持充足、健康自评相对好、运用积极应对策略的照顾者有较高的生活满意度。要提升家庭亲属照顾者的心理健康,首要的任务之-是增强照顾资源,包括经济的、健康的、心理的、社会的资源。     

健康与家庭资产选择

本文采用中国居民家庭微观调查数据,运用资产参与和资产分配模型,分别讨论健康状况对居民家庭资产配置行为的影响。研究结果表明:投资者的健康状况不显著影响其参与股票市场和风险资产市场的决定,但影响家庭的股票或风险资产在总财富中的比重,健康状况不佳会导致这两个比重较低,在控制了参保情况或时间展望期后这一影响仍然显著;而投资者风险态度和遗赠动机能够一定程度上解释健康风险的影响。