TY  - JOUR
AU  - Pezzin,Liliana E.
AU  - Pollak,Robert A.
AU  - Schone,Barbara S.
TI  - Long-Term Care of the Disabled Elderly:  Do Children Increase Caregiving by Spouses?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14328
PY  - 2008
Y2  - September 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14328
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14328.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Liliana E. Pezzin
Health Policy Institute
PCOR & Dept. of Medicine
8701 Watertown Plank Road
Milwaukee, WI 53226
E-Mail: lpezzin@mcw.edu

Robert Pollak
Washington University in St. Louis
Arts and Sciences
and the Olin Business School
Campus Box 1133
1 Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO  63130-4899
Tel: 314/935-4918
Fax: 314/935-6359
E-Mail: pollak@wustl.edu

Barbara Schone
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
540 Gaither Road
Rockville, MD 20850
and Georgetown Public Policy Institute
3520 Prospect St. NW
Washington, DC  20007
Tel: 301/594-2059
Fax: 301/594-2166
E-Mail: bschone@ahrq.gov
AB  - Do adult children affect the care elderly parents provide each other?  We develop two models in which the anticipated behavior of adult children provides incentives for elderly parents to increase care for their disabled spouses.  The "demonstration effect" postulates that adult children learn from a parent's example that family caregiving is appropriate behavior.  The "punishment effect" postulates that adult children may punish parents who fail to provide spousal care by not providing future care for the nondisabled spouse when necessary.  Thus, joint children act as a commitment mechanism, increasing the probability that elderly spouses will provide care for each other; stepchildren with weak attachments to their parents  provide weaker incentives for spousal care than joint children.  Using data from the HRS, we find evidence that spouses provide more care when they have children with strong parental attachment.
ER  -