Life satisfaction of informal care recipients: Findings from the German Ageing Survey.

Receiving informal care is associated with a decrease in life satisfaction, irrespective of the type of informal care received. These results highlight the necessity of taking the care recipient's perception into consideration, and indicate the imminent need for the care situation to be improved, if the life satisfaction of care recipients is to be maintained. Statement of contribution What is already known on the topic? In general, few studies investigate the care recipients' perspective regarding outcomes associated with the receipt of informal care. Particularly, studies on the association between receipt of informal care and life satisfaction, and especially longitudinal population-based studies, are rare. What does this study add? Evidence of a population-based longitudinal study in a sparsely investigated field of research Our longitudinal study found recipients of informal care to report reduced life satisfaction This negative association remained stable when investigating different tasks of informal care.