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Introduction: The increasing participation of women in the workforce may make it difficult to sustain the current model of elderly care. The aim of this article was to determine the changing sociodemographic profile of informal elderly caregivers with disabilities, the interaction between employment and care, and the view of the public on the responsibility of that care., Materials and Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of secondary data from four national surveys were used: the disability surveys held in 1999 (N=3,936) and 2008 (N=5,257), the 2011-12 National Health Survey (N=439), and the Family and Gender survey of 2012 (N=1,359). They were analysed using contingency tables based on gender and age., Results: Half of the informal caregivers were women aged 45 to 64 years. Between 1999 and 2011-12 they became more concentrated in the 55-64 age-bracket, among whom participation in the workforce doubled from 20% to 40%. Increased care for men was associated with unemployment. Care work had a negative impact on working life, with greater impact among women and those who cared for elderly people with severe disabilities. Less likely to consider that elderly care provision should rest on family are 45-54 year-old economically active women (only 42%) or those who are more educated (40%), compared to 60% of economically inactive women and 55% of less educated women., Conclusions: Economically active and educated women are less inclined to family-based care, but assume it independently of their workforce participation, whereas males do so according to their availability., (Copyright © 2017 SEGG. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: To identify the effect of health deterioration on residential dependency., Material and Methods: We performed a cross-sectional analysis of the microdata from the Catalan Survey of Health (2006), which features a sample of 3566 individuals aged 65 and over. A set of socio-demographic (sex, age, marital status, educational level and municipality size), as well as health variables (self-rated health, BADL and IADL dependency) associated with residential dependency are analysed by bivariate and multivariate logistic regression., Results: Multivariate analysis shows that age, marital status and health are the variables that most affect living arrangements and cohabitation. Among men, being aged 80 or over (OR>4), being unmarried or widowed (OR=6.4) and having one or more IADL dependencies (OR>2.8) increases the risk of residential dependency. Whereas for women being aged 80 and over (OR>4), being unmarried (OR=6.8) or widowed (OR=11.8) and having three or more IADL dependencies (OR=2.7) is associated with residential dependency. Municipality size and the level of education (in the latter case only for men) are also significant determining factors (P<0.05)., Conclusion: Although health deterioration, and especially IADL dependency, affects residential dependency, its impact is lower than that of socio-demographic variables, such as marital status or age. What is more, health has a greater influence on men than women, who live independently until they experience great difficulty in coping with their activities of daily living. On the other hand, men seem to fall more easily into residential dependency once they experience any IADL dependency., (Copyright © 2009 SEGG. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)