Hoffman, Geoffrey J.

Older spousal caregiving relationships involve support that may be affected by the health of either the caregiver or care recipient. We conducted a longitudinal analysis using pooled data from 4,632 community-dwelling spousal care recipients and caregivers aged ⩾50 from the 2002 to 2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. We specified logistic and negative binomial regression models using lagged predictor variables to assess the role of partner health status on spousal caregiver and care recipient health care utilization and physical functioning outcomes.

This study examined differences between paid and unpaid family/friend caregivers to better understand the consumer-driven caregiving workforce. We compared economic vulnerability, unhealthy behavior, and serious emotional distress for 475 paid and 10,500 unpaid family/friend informal caregivers from the 2009 California Health Interview Survey. We then estimated whether caregiver status moderated the relationship between economic vulnerability and health outcomes.