The Effect of Intra- and Intergenerational Caregiving on Subjective Well-Being – Evidence of a Population Based Longitudinal Study among Older Adults in Germany

Objective: To examine whether intra- and intergenerational caregiving affect subjective well-being (SWB) of the caregivers longitudinally.

Methods: Data were drawn from the German Ageing Survey (DEAS), which is a population-based longitudinal study of individuals living in Germany aged 40 and over. The waves in 2002, 2008 and 2011 were used (with 10,434 observations). SWB was examined in a broad sense, covering affective (AWB) and cognitive well-being (CWB), positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) as well as functional and mental health. While intragenerational caregiving was defined as providing care for spouse/partner, intergenerational caregiving was defined as providing care for mother, father, mother-in-law, father-in-law, partner’s mother or partner’s father.

Results: Fixed effects regressions adjusting for sociodemographic factors, social network, self-efficacy and morbidity showed that intergenerational informal care did not affect the various SWB outcome measures. Intragenerational caregiving affected CWB (women) and mental health (total sample and men), whereas it did not affect the other outcome variables.

Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of intragenerational caregiving for mental health (men) and cognitive well-being (women). Consequently, interventions to avoid mental illness due to intragenerational caregiving are urgently needed.