Competing demands on adult children: how do they shape their provision of informal care?

Population ageing is increasing the demand for informal care, heightening the importance of adult children as potential carers to their older parents. Adult children, however, may be subject to competing demands for informal care provision when individual characteristics, such as gender and employment status, combine with household level characteristics, such as the presence of young children or vulnerable family members. Previous research often considers these competing demands as separate factors which can influence the provision of informal care, rather than in combination. Therefore, this study exploits data from Wave 13 (2021–2023) of the UK Household Longitudinal Study and applies multicategorical multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA) to assess the additive and interactive role of competing demands in influencing the provision of informal care. The results indicate that the provision of informal care is driven by the additive influence of the competing demands. Moreover, they also reveal the layering of certain social characteristics, which cumulate, rather than intersect, to create a social profile with a notably higher predicted probability of providing informal care.