Old-Age Care Provision in Spain in the Context of a New System of Long-Term Care and a Lingering Economic Crisis

This study analyses whether care providing strategies for non-institutionalized older adults have changed in the context of a new system of long-term care that emanated from the 2006 Dependency Act, and a lingering economic crisis. The Spanish sample of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (waves 2006 and 2013) is employed to analyse how different individual and household factors affect care strategies, distinguishing between informal (co-resident and non-resident) carers, formal carers and combined formal and informal care, using descriptive statistics and multinomial logit regression. Results show that availability, co-residence and the proximity of children are the main determinants of informal care provision to elders in need. Some externalization of informal care from the domestic domain also took place between 2006 and 2013 as well as an increase in multiple-care arrangements. In the discussion, we comment on why the new Spanish care system that was developed during the economic boom but implemented during the bust years may have consolidated informal care through the economic compensation of mainly family carers. Future research should investigate whether the increase in combined formal and informal care is because of preferences of potential family caregivers or due to a lack of alternatives.