Social Welfare & Social Work

Providing care to persons with Alzheimer's disease poses challenges for spouses and adult children, including experiencing stigmatic beliefs towards themselves—i.e., family stigma. Drawing on the frameworks of ethnicity and stigma and ethnicity and dementia, the current study explored stigmatic experiences among Israeli Arab family caregivers of a person with Alzheimer's disease. Three focus groups with 20 caregivers (adult children and spouses) of persons with Alzheimer's disease were conducted. Data were analyzed using theory-led thematic analysis.

Data were used from the 1991–2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey to examine the influence of informal care on labor market outcomes for married women of working aged, with emphasis on caregiving intensity. After accounting for potential endogeneity between caregiving and labor force participation (LFP) through simultaneous equations modeling, caregivers who provided more than 15 or 20 hr of caregiving per week were 4.5–7.7% less likely to be LFPs. Intensive caregivers who remained working had significantly lower (4.97–7.20) weekly hours of work.

This paper explores the definitions of social contract on elderly caregiving among a group of seven Chilean aging experts. The data show that for Chileans, family remains a strong institution that should provide care of its members, with daughters or daughters-in-law being the preferred person to provide care. Also, age segregation, along with the gradual privatization of services such as health care and the pension system, promotes individuality: this can become a problem for future generations because they are no longer concerned with helping others.