Alice Falkiner is a PhD Candidate with ADSRI.

Abstract
Informal care provided by family members is the most common form of care for people with disabilities or long term health problems in Australia. The ageing of the Australian population is likely to increase demand for care, and increase the number of Australians providing informal care. It is therefore important to understand who is likely to provide informal care, and at what age Australians are most ‘at risk’ of providing care for family members. This paper assesses the different patterns of providing care by men and women, and by relationship status. As a longitudinal survey, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey provides an opportunity to examine patterns of care over time. Event history analysis is used on data from waves 5-9 (years 2005-2009) of the HILDA survey. A discrete time hazard model, controlling for other socio-economic factors, shows that women are significantly more likely to provide informal care than men and that people living with a partner are more likely to provide care than singles. Survival analysis is used to provide the hazard and survivor functions: the hazard function illustrates the conditional probabilities that men, women, singles and those living with a partner are at risk of providing care at each age, and the survivor function provides the proportion not providing care at each age. Findings from the survival analysis indicate that there are statistically significant differences in survival time between all combinations of sex and relationship status, except between single men and single women.