The impact of population aging on transfers in the form of caregiving and on the associated well-being

Emilio Zagheni, University of Washington, Seattle
Joan Ryan, University of Washington, Seattle
Denys Dukhovnov, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY)

Caregiving is an important component of non-monetary transfers between and within generations. We propose a framework to evaluate the impact of demographic change on "who gives time to whom," using matrices of time transfers by age and sex, and weighing time flows by self-reported indicators of well-being, for activities related to childcare and adult care. The empirical analysis based on the American Time Use Survey (ATUS 2011-2103) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Disability and Use of Time Module (DUST 2013) reveals that people have more positive feelings and less negative moods when caring for children as opposed to caring for adults. Projections for the next several decades indicate that, although reductions in the care support ratio would be relatively small, population aging implies that an increased proportion of transfers would have less positive feelings associated to them, with potentially significant mental health consequences.