Journal article

Objectives: Dutch health economic guidelines include a costing manual, which describes preferred research methodology for costing studies and reference prices to ensure high quality studies and comparability between study outcomes. This paper describes the most important revisions of the costing manual compared to the previous version. Methods: An online survey was sent out to potential users of the costing manual to identify topics for improvement. The costing manual was aligned with contemporary health economic guidelines.

This paper examines gender differences in the long-term care of older parents in India by studying the expected provision of care by married sons and daughters. Gender differences in long-term care are important, as the sociocultural environment of India shapes the role of married children.

Stroke is a leading cause of disability in China, frequently resulting in the need for informal care. No information, however, is available on costs of informal care associated with stroke, required to understand the true cost of stroke in China. Using the 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we identified 4447 respondents aged ≥65 years suitable for analyses, including 184 stroke survivors. We estimated the economic burden of informal care associated with stroke using a two-part model.

Objectives: To identify caregiver profiles of persons with mild to moderate dementia and to investigate differences between identified caregiver profiles, using baseline data of the international prospective cohort study Actifcare. 

Methods: A latent class analysis was used to discover different caregiver profiles based on disease related characteristics of 453 persons with dementia and their 453 informal caregivers. These profiles were compared with regard to quality of life (CarerQoL score), depressive symptoms (HADS-D score) and perseverance time. 

With increasing pressure on retirement-aged individuals to provide informal care while remaining in the work-force, it is important to understand the impact of informal care demands on individuals’ retirement decisions. This paper explores whether different intensities of informal caregiving can lead to retirement for women in the United States. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, we control for time-invariant heterogeneity and for time-varying sources of bias with a two-stage least squares model with fixed effects.

Reproducing care demands and dependency, enacting and affirming values“flying blind” in how and how long to sustain caring This study aimed to understand how adult children sustain caring for persons with dementia (PwDs) within their family and formal care contexts in Canada. Half-day focus groups were conducted with adult daughters and adult sons in Toronto, Canada. Using constructivist grounded theory, we examined both substantive concepts and group dynamics.

We study the economic cost of dementia in Chile, and its variation according to socioeconomic status (SES). We use primary data from a survey of 330 informal primary caregivers who completed both a RUD-Lite and a socio-demographic questionnaire to evaluate the severity of dementia and caregiver’s burden. The costs of dementia are broken into three components: direct medical costs (medical care, drugs, tests); direct social costs (social service, daycare); and indirect costs (mostly associated to informal care). The average monthly cost per patient is estimated at US$ 1,463.

Background: Informal care is often not included in economic evaluations in healthcare, while the impact of caregiving can be relevant for cost-effectiveness recommendations from a societal perspective. The impact of informal care can be measured and valued with the CarerQol instrument, which measures the impact of informal care on seven important burden dimensions (CarerQol-7D) and values this in terms of general quality of life (CarerQol-VAS).

This study examines factors associated with work–life fit and sense of geographic community as mediators of the negative association between caregiving demands and well-being among employed informal caregivers. Data were drawn from a larger project assessing well-being among residents of three mid-size cities in Ontario, Canada. A subsample was selected of informal caregivers who worked for pay for at least eight hours/week ( n  = 276). Caregiving demands were measured by time spent caring for an adult who was a relative, friend, or neighbour.

Despite the internationally recognised importance of informal care, especially in settings with limited services, few studies focus on the informal care for people with mental health problems in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Making informal care visible is important for understanding the challenges and identifying the needs to be addressed. This ethnographic case study explored the dynamics of informal care for people with chronic psychotic symptoms in a group of San living in poor socioeconomic circumstances in a township near Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa.