Care use by the disabled: Are professional and informal care substitutes?
Résumé
We here assume that the decisions to use formal and/or informal care are made jointly, so that the choice to use one is a function of the utility associated with the other. Applying asymptotic least-squares methods to data from the 2008 French Disability-Healthcare survey, we uncover a two-way (negative) causal relationship between the two types of care. Those most likely to use informal care forego some professional care, and those who benefit from professional care rely less on help from their relatives. This substitution between informal and formal care is partly explained by the restricted access to professional care of the most economically-vulnerable, people under 60 and those living in a couple, for whom the support of relatives helps compensate for the lack of formal care.