Pomeroy Edward, Fiori Francesca
School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, KY16 9AL, UK.
Department of Social Work & Social Policy, University of Strathclyde, G4 0LT, UK.
SSM Popul Health. 2025 Jan 10;29:101754. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2025.101754. eCollection 2025 Mar.
Population ageing is increasing the demand for informal care, heightening the importance of adult children as potential carers to their older parents. Adult children, however, may be subject to competing demands for informal care provision when individual characteristics, such as gender and employment status, combine with household level characteristics, such as the presence of young children or vulnerable family members. Previous research often considers these competing demands as separate factors which can influence the provision of informal care, rather than in combination. Therefore, this study exploits data from Wave 13 (2021-2023) of the UK Household Longitudinal Study and applies multicategorical multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA) to assess the additive and interactive role of competing demands in influencing the provision of informal care. The results indicate that the provision of informal care is driven by the additive influence of the competing demands. Moreover, they also reveal the layering of certain social characteristics, which cumulate, rather than intersect, to create a social profile with a notably higher predicted probability of providing informal care.
人口老龄化正在增加对非正式照料的需求，凸显了成年子女作为其老年父母潜在照料者的重要性。然而，当性别和就业状况等个人特征与家庭层面的特征（如家中有幼儿或弱势家庭成员）相结合时，成年子女可能会面临提供非正式照料的相互竞争的需求。以往的研究通常将这些相互竞争的需求视为可影响非正式照料提供的单独因素，而非综合因素。因此，本研究利用英国家庭纵向研究第13波（2021 - 2023年）的数据，并应用个体异质性和判别准确性多分类多层次分析（MAIHDA）来评估相互竞争的需求在影响非正式照料提供方面的累加和交互作用。结果表明，非正式照料的提供受到相互竞争需求的累加影响。此外，研究结果还揭示了某些社会特征的分层现象，这些特征是累积而非交叉的，从而形成了一个预测提供非正式照料概率明显更高的社会概况。
