Does Publicly-Funded Adult Social Care Impact Informal and Unpaid Carers' Quality of Life in England?

Abstract

Informal carers are important for their care recipients, but the burden of care may have a detrimental effect on the carer's well-being. Publicly-funded Adult Social Care (simply, ASC) in England may alleviate this burden. We therefore investigate whether ASC expenditure improves carers' quality of life and the channels through which this effect may exist. We analyze data on informal carers from the biennial Survey of Adult Carers in England in 2014/15, 2016/17, 2018/19 and 2021/22. We implement panel data instrumental variables methods that use conditionally exogenous variability in the local taxation to identify the causal effect of ASC expenditure. Our main finding suggests that a £1000-increase in ASC expenditure per client increases, on average, the carer-reported quality of life score by 0.3, which amounts to 4.2% of its average in 2021/22. Moreover, ASC expenditure has a beneficial impact on informal carers' care tasks, health, range of employment choices, and finances.