Profiling caregivers: Caregiving workload, mobility, stress, and remote work difficulties

The increasing focus on the urban dimensions of care has brought attention to mobility as a crucial aspect. However, traditional origin–destination and time-use surveys often overlook the nuanced and diverse aspects of care-related mobility. They fail to account for the variety of care tasks, socioeconomic conditions, spatial contexts, and relational dynamics that shape different forms of care-related movement. Our article aims to contribute to filling these gaps by analyzing caregivers’ mobility, caregiving tasks, and sociodemographic characteristics. Using a survey in Chile that compares a pre-pandemic scenario with the first reaction to the pandemic, the article uses hierarchical clustering to find caregiving-related profiles and a joint multivariate model to identify observed and unobserved effects impacting the level of stress, ease of movement, and struggle to engage in paid work from home. Our analysis identifies four distinct caregiving mobility profiles, revealing significant disparities. Caregivers with heavier workloads and limited resources experienced the greatest challenges, including restricted mobility, higher stress, and difficulty managing remote work. Our model shows that gender is a critical factor influencing stress, mobility, and work-from-home struggles, even after accounting for socioeconomic and behavioral factors. Individuals less concerned about COVID-19 mobility restrictions reported lower stress levels. Lower stress levels were reported by those less concerned about COVID-19 restrictions, while stress was notably higher among caregivers for individuals with special needs and young children (0–6 years). Connectivity issues further intensified remote work challenges. These findings underscore the need for urban mobility planning and policies that recognize caregiving as a relational activity shaped by spatial and social dynamics, emphasizing the diverse impacts on caregivers.