The Future of Formal and Informal Caregiving in Ageing Societies

Ageing and public health are being reshaped by changes in demographics, labour markets, technology, environmental conditions, and social policy. As the demand for care increases, formal care systems face workforce shortages, recruitment and retention challenges, rising costs, and growing reliance on migrant labour. At the same time, informal caregivers increasingly combine unpaid care with employment and other responsibilities. Digital technologies, artificial intelligence, remote monitoring, robotics, and care platforms are transforming care delivery, while also raising concerns about workload, privacy, inequality, and autonomy. Climate-related events and other disruptions further expose the vulnerabilities of home-, community-, and institution-based care. Despite expanding research, important gaps remain in understanding how responsibilities, risks, and resources are redistributed among families, professionals, communities, markets, states, and technologies. Further investigation is needed to identify equitable, sustainable, and resilient approaches to caregiving.This Research Topic aims to examine how formal and informal caregiving are evolving in ageing societies and how their relationship is being reshaped by demographic, labour-market, technological, environmental, and policy change. It will consider when formal and informal care complement or substitute for one another, how responsibilities and costs are transferred across care providers, and how emerging technologies affect care relationships and outcomes. Particular attention will be given to workforce sustainability, migrant care labour, work-care reconciliation, the economic consequences of informal caregiving, digital inequalities, financing and social protection, and continuity of care during climate-related and other major disruptions. The Research Topic welcomes quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, comparative, implementation, and policy-evaluation studies that generate actionable evidence for sustaining high-quality, person-centred care while protecting caregiver wellbeing, autonomy, and dignity.To gather further insights into the changing organisation, delivery, and governance of care in ageing societies, this Research Topic will focus on the interactions among formal services, informal caregivers, public policy, communities, markets, and technology. Suitable themes include, but are not limited to:Interactions, substitution, complementarity, and transitions between formal and informal care;Formal care workforce shortages, recruitment, retention, migration, skills, wages, and working conditions;Informal caregiving, employment, work-care reconciliation, leave, income, pensions, and social protection;Artificial intelligence, digital technologies, remote monitoring, robotics, and care platforms, including their effects on workload, privacy, care relationships, and the digital care divide;Climate change, extreme events, and other disruptions affecting care continuity, preparedness, and resilience;Financing, eligibility, affordability, and the distribution of care responsibilities among the state, market, family, and community;Coordination across home care, community services, health care, and long-term care, including comparative policy reforms and service innovations;Health, psychological, social, and economic outcomes for caregivers and care recipients;Gender, socioeconomic, migration-related, disability-related, geographic, and other inequalities in caregiving and support. Topic editors: Aviad Tur-Sinai, Giovanni Lamura Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84922/the-future-of-formal-and-informal-caregiving-in-ageing-societies