Life Satisfaction and Its Changing Sub-Dimensions of Family Caregivers over Time

Life satisfaction is made up of different sub-dimensions. But how does it change when an incisive life event occurs which demonstrates how relative the importance of some things in life is? What happens to the subjective weighting of sub-dimensions when transitioning into the caregiver role? How do these sub-dimensions develop over the time of caregiving?
This study shows that the individual weighting of sub-dimensions such as satisfaction with family, health, income, and even home, will change as soon as one becomes a family caregiver.
The analyses are based on the data of the German Socio-Economic Panel, which provides annual information about caregiving situations in German households and life satisfaction since 1997. Using panel data allows to capture intraindividual changes by controlling time-constant unobserved heterogeneity. The longitudinal research design also enables to identify re-weighting of sub-dimensions over time.
Therefore, it can be shown that persons who care for their relatives within the same household re-weight their sub-dimensions of life satisfaction after their transition into caregiving. Thus, the importance of satisfaction with the family becomes stronger, the impact of satisfaction with income is significantly reduced.