Trends in Informal Caregiving

Informal care is typically defined as unpaid care/help provided to older persons with a chronic illness, disability or other long-lasting health problem or care need by family, close relatives, friends or neighbours.

1) Is there someone living in this household whom you have helped regularly during the last twelve months with personal care, such as washing, getting out of bed, or dressing?

2) In the last twelve months, have you personally given personal care or practical household help to a family member living outside your household, a friend or neighbour?

How to use the graph (click to view):

To view trends in prevalence of informal caregiving for adults aged 50+ years, first select the level of disaggregation from the tabs below. To select the regions and trends to compare, either click the check-boxes below the graph or click on the groups in the legend to the right of the graph. Use your mouse and hover over the point of interest on the graph to view the figures for prevalence rates. Hovering over the graph will also activate the modebar in the top right corner of the graph, where the graphs can be downloaded, zoomed in/out, and more. The graphs are free to download using the camera icon in the top right corner of the graph, proper citation is required if used. See the notes below the graph for further details on the data used as well as how to cite the graph.

Income and wealth are categorized as those in the bottom two quintiles (i.e. up to the 40th percentile of the income/wealth distribution) versus the top three quintiles (i.e. all those above the 40th percentile). Income is measured as net household income aggregated from all income components in SHARE and wealth is measured as household net worth. For ranking in the income/wealth distribution, income and wealth are equivalized according to the OECD scale.

Informal caregiving has also been categorized according to age, as caregiving roles tend to change across older age. Those aged 50-64 are more likely to provide intergenerational care (i.e. care to a parent or spouse’s parent), while those 65+ are more likely to provide spousal care.

Note: Own calculations based on SHARE data release 7.0.0. Caution should be taken when interpreting changes in prevalence between points as the x-axis is not to scale. Data for *wave 3 (2008/09, SHARELIFE) are not available as respondents are not asked about any informal caregiving they provide. As a result, the data point for wave 3 is averaged between the data for waves 2 (2006/07) and 4 (2011/12). Data for wave 7 (2017, SHARELIFE) are also unavailable for similar reasons. Due to insufficient consistent data for all countries comprising the Eastern cluster for 2013, these data points are averaged between 2011 and 2015. Sample sizes of countries should be considered when interpreting trends for total women and men. Sample sizes by region are as follows: Total (n=99,884); Northern (n=21,539): Sweden (n=8,437), Netherlands (n=8,498), Denmark (n=4,603); Continental (n=43,537): Austria (n=1,911), Germany (n=21,827), France (n=15,352), Switzerland (n=1,815), Belgium (n=2,631); Southern (n=21,866): Spain (n=8,671), Italy (n=13,194); Eastern (n=12,942): Czech Republic (n=3,593), Poland (n=9,348). For further inquiries concerning the data, please contact us at futuregen@euro.centre.org.

To cite the graphs, please use the following citation, substituting the title of the graph and access date as appropriate:
FutureGen Data Navigator (2021). Prevalence of informal caregiving by gender and age (Aged 50-64/65+ years). Based on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Accessed [insert date here] from https://futuregen.euro.centre.org/data-navigator/

Trends in Informal Caregiving

Informal care is typically defined as unpaid care/help provided to older persons with a chronic illness, disability or other long-lasting health problem or care need by family, close relatives, friends or neighbours.

Data selection

Data selection