Longo Francesco, Claxton Karl, Salas-Ortiz Andrea, Lomas James, Martin Stephen
Centre for Health Economics, University of York, York, UK.
Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, UK.
Health Econ. 2025 Jul;34(7):1217-1238. doi: 10.1002/hec.4957. Epub 2025 Mar 18.
Informal carers are important for their care recipients, but the burden of care may have a detrimental effect on the carer's well-being. Publicly-funded Adult Social Care (simply, ASC) in England may alleviate this burden. We therefore investigate whether ASC expenditure improves carers' quality of life and the channels through which this effect may exist. We analyze data on informal carers from the biennial Survey of Adult Carers in England in 2014/15, 2016/17, 2018/19 and 2021/22. We implement panel data instrumental variables methods that use conditionally exogenous variability in the local taxation to identify the causal effect of ASC expenditure. Our main finding suggests that a £1000-increase in ASC expenditure per client increases, on average, the carer-reported quality of life score by 0.3, which amounts to 4.2% of its average in 2021/22. Moreover, ASC expenditure has a beneficial impact on informal carers' care tasks, health, range of employment choices, and finances.
非正式护理人员对其护理对象很重要，但护理负担可能会对护理人员的幸福产生不利影响。英国由公共资金资助的成人社会护理（简称为ASC）可能会减轻这种负担。因此，我们研究ASC支出是否能提高护理人员的生活质量以及这种影响可能存在的途径。我们分析了来自2014/15、2016/17、2018/19和2021/22年英格兰成人护理人员两年一次调查的非正式护理人员数据。我们采用面板数据工具变量方法，利用地方税收中有条件的外生变异性来确定ASC支出的因果效应。我们的主要研究结果表明，每位客户的ASC支出增加1000英镑，护理人员报告的生活质量得分平均提高0.3，这相当于2021/22年其平均得分的4.2%。此外，ASC支出对非正式护理人员的护理任务、健康状况就业选择范围和财务状况都有有益影响。
