Netherlands

This study investigates how (a) the reliance on public care and (b) the type of public care received by older people in the Netherlands depends on the availability of partners and adult children. Older people aged 65 years and older were surveyed in the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study at two time-points. Survey results were linked to registry data on public care receipt at the two time-points. Multilevel models revealed that receiving frequent help in the household from children was not associated with public care receipt. Only men having a partner were less likely to receive public care.

Aims.  This paper reports a study to investigate the relationships between informal and formal care, changing relationships over time, impact of integrated care, and theoretical and methodological lessons that can be drawn from research on this topic.

Including informal care in economic evaluations is increasingly advocated but problematic. We investigated three well-known concerns regarding contingent valuation (CV): (1) the item non-response of CV values, (2) the sensitivity of CV values to the individual circumstances of caring, and (3) the choice of valuation method by comparing willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) values for a hypothetical marginal change in hours of informal care currently provided.

Besides patients’ health and well-being, healthcare interventions may affect the well-being of significant others. Such ‘spill over effects’ in significant others may be distinguished in two distinct effects: (i) the caregiving effect and (ii) the family effect. The first refers to the welfare effects of providing informal care, i.e., the effects of caring for someone who is ill. The second refers to a direct influence of the health of a patient on others’ well-being, i.e., the effects of caring about other people.