The Carer QALY Trap

The term “Carer QALY” was coined in a paper by Mott et al. (2023) and is identified as the case where “it is possible for an effective treatment that provides survival gains (with relatively little or no QOL gain) to appear less effective than the comparators when carer QOL is considered.” While the term “Carer…

How does caregiving impact employment and earnings?

This is the question that a recent NBER working paper by Nicole Maestas, Matt Messel, and Yulya Truskinovsky (2023) aim to answer. The authors use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) among individual report providing unpaid care to family and friend. The SIPP data are then linked to earnings data from…

Family knows best

Is caregiving by family members superior to paid home health caregiving? According to a paper by Coe et al. (2019), the answer is ‘yes’. We find that some family involvement in home‐based care significantly decreases health‐care utilization: lower likelihood of emergency room use, Medicaid‐financed inpatient days, any Medicaid hospital expenditures, and fewer months with Medicaid‐paid…

Measuring caregiver quality of life

Poor health does not just affect the patient, but also the caregiver who provide physicial, emotional and financial support for these patients. To measure the impact of a disease on patient quality of life, there are a number of metrics one can choose from such as EQ-5D-5L, EQ-5D-VAS, SF-36 among others. Some of these surveys…

Half a trillion dollars

Clearly, the care family members provide for sick relatives add significant value to the life of the infirm. Many non-economists may consider the cost of this care as “free” because family members typically are not paid for this services.  However, nothing could be further from the truth.  If family members were not caring for their…