How Do Attitudes of Adult Children Toward Long-Term Care Change with Education? International Evidence

Global demographic trends indicate that the world population is aging and education acquisition is increasing. For the first time in history, people are expected to spend more years as adults with living parents than as a parent of teenage children, and the average years of schooling have increased dramatically over the past several decades for many countries. Additionally, family-provided care is still the most important form of care to meet care demands worldwide. As strong filial norms could affect older adults' long-term care decision-making, understanding the link between filial obligations and education is critical under these trends. Using individual data from the World Values Survey and an instrumental variables strategy to account for endogeneity, this study finds that adult children with higher education levels have lower filial beliefs. Since population aging is expected to increase the demand for long-term care services, and education can reduce the supply of family-provided long-term care services, countries must start addressing this gap.