Are the gender gaps in informal caregiving intensity and burden closing due to the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from the Netherlands.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Raiber K
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8444913 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:ObjectivesWe examine gender differences in the experienced burden of partner caregivers using the stress-appraisal model. Gender differences can be explained by differences in conditions of burden (primary stressors, help from others, hours of caregiving, and secondary stressors) and how strong their effects are.MethodThe data are from the Netherlands' Older Persons and Informal Caregivers Survey-Minimum Data Set (N = 1,611 caregivers). We examine mediation and moderation effects using structural equation modeling.ResultsWomen experience greater partner caregiver burden than men, which is related to women experiencing more secondary stressors (relational and financial problems, problems combining different tasks). For women and men alike, there is a positive association between burden and more primary stressors (partner's care need indicated by health impairment), help from other caregivers, and secondary stressors. For male caregivers, caregiving intensity also contributes to a greater burden.DiscussionThis study corroborates the structural impact of gender on the conditions of as well as their effects on the partner caregiver burden. Reducing the hours of caregiving for male caregivers in severe care situations and helping female and male caregivers deal emotionally with the caregiving situation can reduce the partner caregiver burden.
| S-EPMC6327655 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background: Health risks among informal caregivers have received inadequate attention in low and middle income countries. We examined cross-sectional data from 28611 adults 18 years and older in Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia and South Africa in the WHO Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health (SAGE) to examine gender differences in informal caregiving and wellbeing. Methods: Wellbeing was measured by self-rated health, difficulties with tasks, self-reported and diagnosed depression and anxiety. Informal caregiving was specific to adults and constructed as categorical variable with the respondent as: the main caregiver, non-caregiver but an adult in the household needs care, and no-one ill in the household; multinomial gender-stratified regression models assessed adjusted relative risk ratios (ARRRs). Results: Female caregivers were more likely to report moderate difficulties with life tasks [ARRR = 1.45 (95% CI: 1.01, 2.08)], feel mild-moderate anxiety [ARRR = 1.64 (95% CI: 1.22, 2.22)], and report feeling severely depressed [ARRR = 1.86 (95% CI: 1.28, 2.69)] compared to female non-caregivers. Even when women were not caregivers, having someone ill at home was associated with extreme difficulties with life tasks [ARRR = 2.32 (95% CI: 1.33, 4.04)]. Male caregivers, compared to no-one ill in the household, were more likely to report mild-moderate anxiety [ARRR = 1.8 (95% CI: 1.2, 3.7)] and severe-extreme anxiety [ARRR = 2.22 (95% CI: 1.07, 4.6)]. Conclusions: Caregiving for older adults results in greater health burdens, particularly mental health, for both women and men, though evidence shows that these burdens may be prominent and manifest in more diverse ways for women relative to men.
| S-EPMC7583325 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The purpose of this study was to describe the unique characteristics of informal hospice cancer caregiving.Researchers conducted a secondary analysis of data drawn from a randomized clinical trial of an informal hospice caregiving intervention (N?=?348). Demographic characteristics and measures of the informal caregiving experience of hospice patients and their informal caregivers were compared based on the patient's diagnosis using chi-square tests for association of categorical variables and t tests for continuous variables.Informal caregivers of cancer patients differed from their non-cancer counterparts in a number of respects including patient age, caregiver age, patient residence, relationship between patient and caregiver, amount and duration of care provided, likelihood to incur out-of-pocket expenses related to patient care, caregiver problem-solving style, and impact on caregiver daily schedule. There were no statistically significant differences between cancer and non-cancer caregivers in terms of gender, race, employment status, anxiety, and quality of life.While cancer and non-cancer caregivers are similar in many respects, a number of unique features characterize the informal hospice cancer caregiving experience. Attention to these unique features will allow hospice providers to tailor supportive care interventions to better address cancer caregivers' needs.
| S-EPMC4449794 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Much attention has been paid to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on long-term care but the impact on informal caregivers has remained speculative. In Austria, like in other European countries, informal care is carried out overwhelmingly by (non-cohabiting) relatives. Limited care services available during the pandemic, social-distancing, increased unemployment and competing care needs within households (e.g. due to school closures) may have changed the prevalence and intensity of informal caregiving. Moreover, these changes may have increased the psychological strain experienced by caregivers. Focusing on Austria, this study aims to empirically analyse the following research questions: how have the prevalence and intensity of informal care changed due to the pandemic? How has the psychological well-being of informal caregivers been affected? We use a pre- and post-onset of the pandemic research design based on a representative survey carried out in Austria in June 2020 (N = 2000) in combination with comparable 2015 data from the European Social Survey. Findings suggest that neither prevalence nor intensity of informal care changed significantly due to the pandemic. However, the psychological well-being gap between carers and non-carers increased with the start of the pandemic, especially among men. Findings are discussed in relation to the policy measures implemented and possible policy implications for the future.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10433-021-00611-z.
| S-EPMC7952831 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Despite continuous updates of the human reference genome, there are still hundreds of unresolved gaps which account for about 5% of the total sequence length. Given the availability of whole genome de novo assemblies, especially those derived from long-read sequencing data, gap-closing sequences can be determined. By comparing 17 de novo long-read sequencing assemblies with the human reference genome, we identified a total of 1,125 gap-closing sequences for 132 (16.9% of 783) gaps and added up to 2.2 Mb novel sequences to the human reference genome. More than 90% of the non-redundant sequences could be verified by unmapped reads from the Simons Genome Diversity Project dataset. In addition, 15.6% of the non-reference sequences were found in at least one of four non-human primate genomes. We further demonstrated that the non-redundant sequences had high content of simple repeats and satellite sequences. Moreover, 43 (32.6%) of the 132 closed gaps were shown to be polymorphic; such sequences may play an important biological role and can be useful in the investigation of human genetic diversity.
| S-EPMC7407462 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Older adults are at high risk for stroke and falls, both of which require a large amount of informal caregiving. However, the economic burden of informal caregiving associated with stroke and fall history is not well known.Using the 2010 Health and Retirement Study, data on non-institutionalized adults aged ?65 years (N=10,129) in 2015-2017 were analyzed. Two-part models were used to estimate informal caregiving hours. Based on estimates from the models using a replacement cost approach, the authors derived informal caregiving hours and costs associated with falls in the past 2 years for stroke and non-stroke persons.Both the prevalence of falls overall and of falls with injuries were higher among people with stroke than those without (49.5% vs 35.1% for falls and 16.0% vs 10.3% for injurious falls, p<0.01). Stroke survivors needed more informal caregiving hours than their non-stroke counterparts, and the number of informal caregiving hours was positively associated with non-injurious falls and even more so with injurious falls. The national burden of informal caregiving (2015 U.S. dollars) associated with injurious falls amounted to $2.9 billion (95% CI=$1.1 billion, $4.7 billion) for stroke survivors (about 0.5 million people), and $6.5 billion (95% CI=$4.3 billion, $8.7 billion) for those who never had a stroke (about 3.6 million people).In U.S. older adults, informal caregiving hours and costs associated with falls are substantial, especially for stroke survivors. Preventing falls and fall-related injuries, especially among stroke survivors, therefore has potential for reducing the burden of informal caregiving.
| S-EPMC5819006 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Although the majority of studies on political knowledge document lingering gender-based differences in advanced industrial democracies, most contributors have drawn such conclusions from a single or a handful of countries, using limited batteries of political information items. Exploiting a pooled data set of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems encompassing 106 post-election surveys in forty-seven countries between 1996 and 2011, this article demonstrates that survey instrument-related factors, such as question format and content, as well as the overall difficulty of questions, are more consequential in shaping the size of gender gaps in political knowledge than institutional factors, such as electoral rules or opportunity structures. The research design of this article draws from almost three hundred different items measuring factual political knowledge using the broadest country coverage and most comprehensive approach to measurement to date.
| S-EPMC4968032 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The rising incidence of Alzheimer's disease among older-age adults worldwide has been accompanied by an increase in caregiving burden. Limited work has examined the lived experiences of both formal and informal caregivers of people living with dementia in low-income countries. We conducted one-on-one, in-depth qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of 10 informal caregivers and 5 formal caregivers of people living with dementia in Mbarara, Uganda. They were interviewed about their experiences caring for people with dementia until thematic saturation was reached. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed into English, and thematically analysed. Two primary themes emerged from the data: patient factors influencing caregiving burden (problematic behaviours, such as wandering and aggression) and patient physical health and cognitive deterioration (namely, loss of memory and incontinence). Psychosocial and economic aspects of caregiving burden included financial costs, family conflicts, anxiety, stigma, and substance misuse. Both formal and informal caregivers of people living with dementia experience physical, financial, and psychological stressors. Interventions aimed at reducing these stressors would benefit caregivers as well as improve quality of care for people living with dementia.
| S-EPMC7544160 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Gender differences (GD) in mental health have come under renewed scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic. While rapidly emerging evidence indicates a deterioration of mental health in general, it remains unknown whether the pandemic will have an impact on GD in mental health. To this end, we investigate the association of the pandemic and its countermeasures affecting everyday life, labor, and households with changes in GD in aggression, anxiety, depression, and the somatic symptom burden. We analyze cross-sectional data from 10,979 individuals who live in Germany and who responded to the online survey "Life with Corona" between October 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021. We estimate interaction effects from generalized linear models. The analyses reveal no pre-existing GD in aggression but exposure to COVID-19 and COVID-19 countermeasures is associated with sharper increases in aggression in men than in women. GD in anxiety decreased among participants with children in the household (with men becoming more anxious). We also observe pre-existing and increasing GD with regards to the severity of depression, with women presenting a larger increase in symptoms during the hard lockdown or with increasing stringency. In contrast to anxiety, GD in depression increased among participants who lived without children (women > men), but decreased for individuals who lived with children; here, men converged to the levels of depression presented by women. Finally, GD in somatic symptoms decreased during the hard lockdown (but not with higher stringency), with men showing a sharper increase in symptoms, especially when they lived with children or alone. Taken together, the findings indicate an increase in GD in mental health as the pandemic unfolded in Germany, with rising female vulnerability to depression and increasing male aggression. The combination of these two trends further suggests a worrying mental health situation for singles and families. Our results have important policy implications for the German health system and public health policy. This public health challenge requires addressing the rising burden of pandemic-related mental health challenges and the distribution of this burden between women and men, within families and for individuals who live alone.
| S-EPMC8353131 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundHeart failure is a serious health condition that requires a significant amount of informal care. However, informal caregiving costs associated with heart failure are largely unknown.MethodsWe used a study sample of noninstitutionalized US respondents aged ≥50 years from the 2010 HRS (n = 19,762). Heart failure cases were defined by using self-reported information. The weekly informal caregiving hours were derived by a sequence of survey questions assessing (1) whether respondents had any difficulties in activities of daily living or instrumental activities of daily living, (2) whether they had caregivers because of reported difficulties, (3) the relationship between the patient and the caregiver, (4) whether caregivers were paid, and (5) how many hours per week each informal caregiver provided help. We used a 2-part econometric model to estimate the informal caregiving hours associated with heart failure. The first part was a logit model to estimate the likelihood of using informal caregiving, and the second was a generalized linear model to estimate the amount of informal caregiving hours used among those who used informal caregiving. Replacement approach was used to estimate informal caregiving cost.ResultsThe 943 (3.9%) respondents who self-reported as ever being diagnosed with heart failure used about 1.6 more hours of informal caregiving per week than those who did not have heart failure (P < .001). Informal caregiving hours associated with heart failure were higher among non-Hispanic blacks (3.9 hours/week) than non-Hispanic whites (1.4 hours/week). The estimated annual informal caregiving cost attributable to heart failure was $3 billion in 2010.ConclusionThe cost of informal caregiving was substantial and should be included in estimating the economic burden of heart failure. The results should help public health decision makers in understanding the economic burden of heart failure and in setting public health priorities.
| S-EPMC4392718 | biostudies-literature