Background:Spousal care is the most important source of informal care inold age.Nevertheless, despite the growing importance of this issue, the association betweenproviding spousal care inside the household and pain remains unexplored in Europe.Objective and Methods:This study aims to estimate the prevalence of pain reportedby spouse caregivers aged 65 plus that provide care inside the household and toinvestigate the association between providing spousal care and pain. Data from 17European countries that participated in wave 6 of the Surveyof Health, Aging andRetirement in Europe (SHARE) is used. The analyses are basedon 26,301 respondentsaged 65 years and older who provide informal care inside the household to theirspouse/partner exclusively (N=1,895) or do not provide any informal care (inside oroutside the household) (24,406). Descriptive statistics and multilevel logistic regressions(individual-level as level 1, and country as level 2) were performed.Results:Overall, spouse caregivers report pain more often (63.4%) than theirnon-caregiver‘s counterparts (50.3%). Important differences in the prevalence of painamong spouse caregivers were found between countries, withPortugal (80.3%), Spain(74.6%), France (73%), Italy (72.4%), and Slovenia (72.1) showing the highest prevalenceof pain, and Denmark (36%), Switzerland (41.5) and Sweden (42.3%), the lowest. Resultsfrom multilevel logistic regressions show that European individuals aged 65+who providespousal care have an increased likelihood of reporting pain(OR 1.30; CI=1.13–1.48).Conclusion:Our results suggest that in Europe, spouse caregivers aged 65+are atgreater risk of experiencing pain. Therefore, European policymakers should considerspouse caregivers as a health priority group, and take measures to ensure they receivecomprehensive health and socio-economic supportVS/2009/0562; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian; PINFRA/22209/2016; SHARE-DEV
