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Objective. To examine the effect of changes in parent-child coresidence on caregiving decisions of non-resident siblings over a 5-year period while controlling for characteristics of the elderly parent and adult children in the family network. Method. We use difference-in-difference models applied to Health and Retirement Study-Assets and Health Dynamics of the Elderly data to test the hypothesis that the formation of a joint household between a parent and one of her children raises the bargaining power of non-resident siblings, who then reduce their care to the parent. Similarly, the dissolution of a parent-child household is expected to increase the bargaining power of the child who no longer coresides with the parent relative to her siblings. Results. We find that children whose parent and sibling begin coresiding during the study period are less likely to provide care and provide fewer hours of care than children whose parents never coresided with a child. Adult children whose parent cease coresiding with a sibling, on the other hand, have a higher likelihood of providing care and provide significantly more hours of care relative to children whose parents either coresided with a sibling in both time periods or never coresided with a child. Discussion. Meeting the needs of the growing elderly population while maintaining them in the community is a particular focus of long-term care policy. To the extent that shared living is an important component of such care, the observed sensitivity of nonresident children's caregiving efforts has implications for the well-being of both disabled parents and their coresiding adult children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys for 1997 and 2005, spanning the eight-year period after enactment of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), we examine whether the composition of insurance coverage has changed for working families. Public coverage has played an increasingly important role for working families with children. For families without access to job-based insurance, roughly two- thirds of single-parent and over half of two-parent families with children had at least one family member covered by public insurance in 2005. Among families with access to job- based insurance, nearly half of minority single-parent families had at least one family member with public coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]