A socio-economic approach to the study of the supply of social care to elderly people

<p>The purpose of this paper is to provide a basis for the development of a model of the supply of social care. The social production of welfare (SPOW) provides a framework within which to analyse the effects of disability and services on individuals and their carers. This applies the new home economics and transaction costs economics (Williamson, 1986) to the production of social care by the informal sector. Section I briefly describes the approach which represents informal care networks as producers and consumers of the basic commodities which are the concern of social care agencies. Section II applies this approach to the analysis of the supply of social care. The concept of a caring constraint based on moral utility is used to describe the actions of individuals in committing resources to care and the characteristics of informal sector in producing care are described. These two themes are linked by bargaining points at which the organisation of care is determined given the individual "payoffs" and group based norms, both of which are influenced by moral utility considerations.