Coyte, P. C.

The recent growth of the home care sector combined with societal and demographic changes have given rise to concerns about the adequacy of the supply of family and friend caregivers Potential caregivers face competing time pressures that pull them in the direction of the labour market on one hand and towards unpaid caregiving duties on the other This paper examines the influence of unpaid caregiving on the labour supply of a cohort of working-aged caregivers in Canada with particular emphasis on caregiving intensity Results suggest that caregivers are heterogeneous in both their caregiving

he objective of this study was to estimate the annual costs and consequences of unpaid caregiving by Canadians from a government perspective. We estimated these costs both at the individual and population levels for caregivers aged 45 and older. We conducted a cost-benefit analysis where we considered the costs of unpaid caregiving to be potential losses in income tax revenues and changes in social assistance payments and the potential benefit of reduced paid care expenditures.

A number of OECD countries have implemented policies encouraging longer labour force participation in tandem with policies encouraging informal care provision in the community. To better understand how these policies may affect the available pool of caregivers and labour force participants, we need more evidence about how informal caregiving is related to retirement status and timing. We assessed the association between caregiving intensity and retirement status for individuals aged 55 to 69 using the Canadian 2007 General Social Survey, a cross-sectional survey with 23,404 individuals.