Informal Caring-Time and Caregiver Satisfaction

We study the effect that the care decision process has on the amount of caring-time and on informal caregiver satisfaction. We develop a theoretical framework in which we compare three two-stage sequential games, each of which corresponds to a different care decision (family, caregiver, and recipient). We find cases of overprovision of informal care in both the family and the recipient decision models, since the caregiver is obliged to spend more time than he/she would prefer. We then use the Spanish Survey of Informal Assistance for the Elderly (2004) to study the relationship between the care decision processes and the time that informal caregivers devote to care activities, with the results confirming our theoretical hypotheses. We also find that different care decision processes imply differences in the informal caregivers' satisfaction, with intensive caregivers being less likely to have greater satisfaction.