Familial Care Norms and Caregiver Well-being in Europe: A Cross-national Perspective

• In Event: 546 - Section on Sociology of Population Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Families and Health

Abstract

This paper analyzes a multi-national sample to assess self-reported well-being of individuals who provide dependent care. We pair individual-level data from the 2004 European Social Survey (ESS) for respondents in 22 nations (n=42,523) with country-level measures of attitudinal support for familial caregiving (2007 Eurobarometer), and economic development (GDP). Using multi-level modeling, we compare the association between country-level familial attitudes and caregiver well-being, comparing effects by gender. We find that: (1) caregiving is differentially associated with well-being for men and women; (2) women in countries with support for familial caregiving report worse well-being than do men; (3) female caregivers report worse well-being than male caregivers in countries with attitudinal support for familial caregiving. Our results demonstrate that caregivers, notably female caregivers, are significantly disadvantaged in well-being. Moreover, country-level attitudes toward familial caregiving impact caregiver well-being beyond individual characteristics. These findings are important in the context of Europe’s population structure and political climate emphasizing cuts to caregiver benefits.

Author

• Georgiana Bostean, Chapman University