The share of Danes aged 52–67 who helped a parent or parent-in-law with at least one task in the past month rose from 27.9% in 1997 to 34.8% in 2022, an increase of 6.9 percentage points, according to a study published in the European Journal of Ageing.
The research, led by Anna Amilon and Mads Lybech Christensen, draws on the Danish Longitudinal Study of Ageing linked with population and education registry information covering the period from 1997 to 2022. It examines how adult children’s informal caregiving has evolved over 25 years.
The study period was marked by substantial societal and institutional shifts, including increasing longevity, delayed childbearing, educational expansion, rising female labour force participation and postponed retirement. The authors set out to assess how these developments may have shaped caregiving practices among people in their 50s and early 60s.
Methodologically, the researchers applied Kitagawa–Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition techniques and adjusted predictions from linear probability models to analyse changes in caregiving patterns and their association with socio-economic and demographic factors.
Descriptively, the provision of informal care was more likely among men, individuals in their 50s, those with tertiary education and those who were employed. However, the study finds that this pattern mainly reflects these groups’ greater likelihood of having a surviving parent or parent-in-law.
Once parental survival was accounted for, the socio-economic and demographic differences in caregiving largely disappeared. This suggests that the apparent social patterning of who provides care is largely a function of family structure rather than of differences in the propensity to care.
The authors conclude that the increase in caregiving over the 25-year period was driven primarily by a growing share of adult children with surviving parents or in-laws, coupled with an overall increase in the propensity to provide care, rather than by increasing socio-economic stratification in caregiving.
The findings are based on a Danish national sample of adults aged 52–67 and their caregiving for parents and parents-in-law, and the article is published as open access research. As the study is observational, it describes associations between demographic and socio-economic factors and caregiving over time rather than establishing causal effects, and the results pertain to the Danish context during the 1997–2022 period.
Subject of Research: Trends in informal caregiving by adult children for parents and parents-in-law in Denmark from 1997 to 2022
Article Title: 25 years of adult children’s caregiving in Denmark: demographic change, educational expansion, and longer working lives
Article References: Amilon, A., & Christensen, M. L. (2026). 25 years of adult children’s caregiving in Denmark: demographic change, educational expansion, and longer working lives. European Journal of Ageing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-026-00950-9
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1007/s10433-026-00950-9
Keywords: informal caregiving, Denmark, adult children, ageing parents, longevity, demographic change, socio-economic factors, labour force participation, registry data, decomposition analysis, European Journal of Ageing, parental survival
News Source: Beatrice Stafford. (October 28, 2026). More Danes in their 50s and 60s are caring for ageing parents, study finds. Scienmag.
