Urban–Rural Disparities in Informal Care Intensity of Adult Daughters and Daughters-in-Law for Elderly Parents from 1993–2015: Evidence from a National Study in China

The Chinese population is ageing and the burden of caregiving for elderly on society is getting heavier. With formal long-term care system underdeveloped, informal care provided by family members remains the predominant form of care provision in China. Urban and rural caregivers may face different situations in their informal caring roles due to China’s strict household registration system (hukou). There are few studies focusing on rural–urban disparities in elderly care from the perspective of female caregivers. We used hukou status rather than living location to distinguish urban and rural, and the informal care was divided into low-intensity and high-intensity in our study. We used repeated cross-sectional data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Multinomial logistic regressions and Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition techniques were used to explore the urban–rural disparities. We found that respondents with urban hukou were around 30% more likely to provide informal care than those with rural hukou, and the relative risk ratios value for both low (RRR = 1.29) and high (RRR = 1.30) intensity care were significantly at 5% level. The results of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition showed that the mean difference of informal care time between urban and rural was 3.11. Among them, education attainment can explain 25.10% of the total difference between urban and rural and was the largest contributor to the overall gap. Long-term care system in China should be established and improved, and policies should focus more on the most vulnerable groups such as rural hukou holders and the less-educated.