Estimating the cost of informal care with a novel two-stage approach to individual synthetic control

Publication type

Research Paper

Series Number

22025004

Series

Sheffield Economic Research Paper Series

Authors

Publication date

March 4, 2025

Summary:

Informal carers provide the majority of care for people living with challenges related to older age, long-term illness or disability, often at significant personal cost. Leveraging data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, this paper provides the first robust causal estimates of the caring income penalty using a novel individual synthetic control based method that accounts for unit-level heterogeneity in post-treatment trajectories over time. Our baseline estimates identify an average relative income gap of up to 45%, with monthly losses averaging £162, peaking at £192 after four years for high-intensity unpaid carers. We find that the income penalty is more pronounced for women than for men, and varies by ethnicity and age.

ISSN

17498368

Subjects

Link

https://ideas.repec.org/p/shf/wpaper/2025004.html

#588737

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest