Long-term Care Insurance: Moderating Impacts on Family Caregivers’ Mental Health, Psychological Well-being and Labor Participation
Ying Zhang, Yimeng Zhao, Jinzhao YangAbstract
Objective
Long-term unpaid care work brings heavy chronic psychological pressure to family caregivers, triggers depressed and anxious negative mental states, severely damages their mental health, and further restricts their labor market participation. This paper explores the moderating effect of the long-term care insurance system on caregivers’ psychological well-being and labor participation, aiming to ease care-induced psychological pressure, improve their mental states and safeguard their long-term mental health.
Subjects and Methods
Based on national household survey data, this study takes informal family caregivers as research samples. It adopts multiple regression analysis and moderating effect test model. It empirically analyzes the correlation between care burden psychological pressure, fluctuating mental states, mental health level and labor participation rate, and verifies the regulatory role of long-term care insurance policies.
Results
Excessive care burden significantly raises caregivers’ long-term psychological pressure, worsens their negative mental states, reduces overall mental health level, and inhibits their labor participation willingness. The implementation of long-term care insurance effectively relieves caregivers’ care-related psychological pressure, repairs their disordered mental states, improves their mental health, and further promotes their stable labor participation.
Conclusions
Long-term care insurance plays a positive moderating role in improving family caregivers’ psychological well-being and labor participation. Perfecting this social security system can continuously alleviate caregivers’ persistent psychological pressure, stabilize their healthy mental states, protect their occupational and psychological mental health, and balance family care responsibility and social labor supply.
Acknowledgement
2022 Youth Project of Humanities and Social Sciences Research, Ministry of Education “Effect Comparison and Optimization of Financing Mechanism for Long-Term Care Insurance from the Perspective of Sustainability” (Project No.: 22YJC840042).
Corresponding Author
Yimeng Zhao, Shenyang Normal University, Shenyang, 110031, China.