FIGURE IT OUT… increasing the use of professional caregiving for older people does not necessarily relieve informal caregivers.

Elsa PERDRIX, economist, examines the relationship between formal (professional) and informal (family) care used by older people who have difficulties with activities of daily living. Informal care, which is more common than formal care, can affect the quality of life of those receiving care by creating a situation of dependency on a relative. It also affects the health of caregivers, their integration into the labour market and their social lives. Here, Elsa Pedrix and Quitterie Roquebert analyse how changes in professional care affect the use of informal care.

Territorial variation in the prices of professional care is an exogenous source of variation in the use of this support. On this basis, and using data from the CARE 2015 survey, the causal effect of using professional care on informal care is estimated in non-linear regression models, instrumented by this price variation. These estimates show that the use of professional care is only marginally accompanied by a reduction in the amount of care provided by relatives: an additional 11 hours per week of formal care is required to significantly reduce the probability of using informal care, by 2.6 percentage points. Although the effect is more pronounced for female caregivers than for male caregivers, the increased use of formal care changes neither the emotional nor the material support received from family and friends. Formal care has no specific effect on primary or secondary caregivers, or on caregivers' spouses or children. Nor was observed any significant effect of formal care on the amount of informal care received.

Increasing professional care therefore has a very limited impact on the total amount of informal care. Policies to improve access to professional care, while effective, do not at this stage make it possible to limit the involvement of relatives.