Provision of informal care in England: exploring geographical and cultural associations and neighbourhood characteristics to inform policy

Abstract: Demographic changes in England, in particular the ageing population, means the number of people needing help to perform daily living activities is set to more than double in the next thirty years. The vast majority of this assistance will be provided by informal caregivers, mainly close relatives, but also neighbours and friends.

Our analysis of geographic variation in informal care supply aims to uncover what influences informal care supply taking into account its geographical associations at the level of neighbourhoods. In particular, we want to analyse the neighbourhood spillovers of caregivers’ behaviour, of cultural participation and governmental policies that may influence the provision of informal care at this level.

Our working hypothesis is that the provision of informal care is not only influenced by the specific characteristics of the caregivers, but also by the observation of caregiving behaviour in the community in which the individual lives, in neighbouring communities or by the existence of strong social capital relations in a particular community, which may correlate with aspects of community engagement with its cultural heritage.

We use a spatial modelling approach that allows us to understand the direct and indirect effects of community characteristics on informal care, that is, we take into account, over and above the determinants of informal care, the influence that the characteristics of neighbouring communities can have.