Care for Elderly Parents: Do Children Cooperate?

Do children cooperate when they decide to provide informal care to their elderly parent? This paper assesses which model drives the caregiving decisions of children. I compare the predictive power of two models: a (joint-utility) cooperative and a Nash noncooperative model. I focus on families with two children and one single parent. The model allows caregiving by one child to have a direct externality on the well-being of the sibling. The results suggest that the cooperative model overestimates the level of care received by the parents observed in the data and its predictive power is outperformed by the noncooperative model. This suggests that children are more likely to behave according to a noncooperative model. I also find that children’s participation in caregiving has a positive externality on the well-being of the sibling. I construct an indicator of the degree of noncooperativeness between children and show that it is positively correlated with the number of unmet needs the parent has. I conclude that, because children do not internalize the positive externality when they behave noncooperatively, the current level of informal care provided to parents appears to suffer from a public good problem

Prediction of the dynamic oscillation threshold in a clarinet model with a linearly increasing blowing pressure : influence of noise

This paper presents an analysis of the effects of noise and precision on a simplified model of the clarinet driven by a variable control parameter. When the control parameter is varied the clarinet model undergoes a dynamic bifurcation. A consequence of this is the phenomenon of bifurcation delay: the bifurcation point is shifted from the static oscillation threshold to an higher value called dynamic oscillation threshold. In a previous work [8], the dynamic oscillation threshold is obtained analytically. In the present article, the sensitivity of the dynamic threshold on precision is analyzed as a stochastic variable introduced in the model. A new theoretical expression is given for the dynamic thresholds in presence of the stochastic variable, providing a fair prediction of the thresholds found in finite-precision simulations. These dynamic thresholds are found to depend on the increase rate and are independent on the initial value of the parameter, both in simulations and in theory.Comment: 14 page

Analytical Determination of the Attack Transient in a Clarinet With Time-Varying Blowing Pressure

This article uses a basic model of a reed instrument , known as the lossless Raman model, to determine analytically the envelope of the sound produced by the clarinet when the mouth pressure is increased gradually to start a note from silence. Using results from dynamic bifur-cation theory, a prediction of the amplitude of the sound as a function of time is given based on a few parameters quantifying the time evolution of mouth pressure. As in previous uses of this model, the predictions are expected to be qualitatively consistent with simulations using the Raman model, and observations of real instruments. Model simulations for slowly variable parameters require very high precisions of computation. Similarly, any real system, even if close to the model would be affected by noise. In order to describe the influence of noise, a modified model is developed that includes a stochastic variation of the parameters. Both ideal and stochastic models are shown to attain a minimal amplitude at the static oscillation threshold. Beyond this point, the amplitude of the oscillations increases exponentially, although some time is required before the oscillations can be observed at the '' dynamic oscillation threshold ''. The effect of a sudden interruption of the growth of the mouth pressure is also studied, showing that it usually triggers a faster growth of the oscillations

Does informal care delay nursing home entry? Evidence from Dutch linked survey and administrative data

We assess whether informal care receipt affects the probability of transitioning to a nursing home. Available evidence derives from the US, where nursing home stays are often temporary. Exploiting linked survey and administrative data from the Netherlands, we use the gender mix of children to retrieve exogenous variation in informal care receipt. We find that informal care increases the chance of an admission within a three-year period for individuals with severe functional limitations, and increases the costs incurred on formal home care. For individuals with mild limitations, informal care substantially decreases total care costs, whereas its effect on nursing home admission is unclear. Further, informal care results in lower post-acute care use and hospital care costs, and does not increase mortality. Promoting informal care cannot be expected to systematically result in lower institutionalization rate and care costs, but it may nonetheless induce health benefits for its recipients.</p

Does informal care delay nursing home entry? Evidence from Dutch linked survey and administrative data

We assess whether informal care receipt affects the probability of transitioning to a nursing home. Available evidence points towards informal care decreasing the chance of admission but it only derives from the US, where nursing home stays are often temporary. Exploiting linked survey and administrative data on the 65+ in the Netherlands, we use the gender mix of children to retrieve plausibly exogenous variation in informal care receipt. Our results suggest that nursing home admissions within a three-year period are reduced with informal care for individuals with mild limitations, while they are increased for individuals with severe limitations. For the latter, although informal care increases formal care costs, it also results in lower post-acute care use and mortality. Therefore, policy makers should not expect that promoting informal care systematically results in lower institutionalization rate and care costs. Still, informal support can well be welfare-enhancing: a timely admission may come along with benefits in terms of well-being and survival that may outweigh additional costs

The Consequences of unmet Health Care Needs during the first Wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Health

The first wave of the covid-19 pandemic led many people to have unmet health care needs, which could have detrimental effects on their health. This paper addresses the question of the effect of unmet needs during the first wave of the pandemic on health outcomes up to one year after. We combine two waves of the SHARE survey collected during the covid-19 pandemic (in June/July 2020 and 2021), as well as two waves collected before the pandemic. Our health outcomes are four dummy variables for having troubles with fatigue, falling, fear of falling and dizziness/faints/blackouts issues. Finally, we use an OLS regression with individual and time fixed effects for our difference-indifference analysis, as well as a doubly robust estimator to condition the parallel trend assumption on pre-pandemic covariates. We find substantial short-term effects on the probability of having troubles with fatigue and dizziness. We additionally observe that one year later, June/July 2021, having had unmet health care needs in 2020 increased the probability of having troubles for each of the health measures. We particularly find strong effects for general practitioner (GP) and specialist care

Care for Elderly Parents, Siblings’ Interactions and Gender

We analyze how siblings interact when deciding informal care provision to their elderly parent. We consider a non-cooperative model of the children’s care decisions, allowing productivity of care provision to vary with the child’s gender. We show that this implies that the strategic interaction effects depend on the siblings’ gender composition. The theory leads to a simultaneous bivariate tobit model. Estimation results suggest that sons’ and daughters’ free-riding behavior is significantly larger when the sibling is a sister. This is in line with a higher care provision productivity for women and can explain why women more often provide informal care than men do

Attack transients in clarinet models with different complexity - a comparative view

International audienceRecent works on simplified clarinet models using results from dynamic bifurcation theory have allowed to predict the evolution of the amplitude of sound (the amplitude envelope) for a gradual increase of the blowing pressure. The unrealistic model that predicted the amplitudes to attain very small values, far below the precision of a computer, was later corrected by the addition of stochastic noise to the model. The two models are useful in explaining and understanding why the oscillations appear with a delay relative to the threshold of oscillation that is predicted by purely steady-state models. Both the model of the instrument and that of the noise are extremely simplistic, raising the question of its applicability to real instruments. These models can however be made gradually more complex by introducing more realistic details in the reed or in the resonator, and applying parameter profiles with more complex shapes or noise amplitudes. This presentation shows the differences encountered in the time-evolution of the acoustic wave simulated using two models of different complexity, one with an instantaneous reflection function, another with dispersion. The article explores to which extent can the dynamic predictive model be used to describe the time evolution of more realistic models, and hopefully that of the real instrument