The number of people providing informal care has increased considerably in the last years while, at the same time, about one in four Australians have financial stress problems. This study uses rich longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to estimate the effect of informal care on financial stress. To establish causality, we exploit a fixed effect‐instrumental variable approach to address omitted variable bias and reverse causality problems. Our findings show that informal caregiving increases financial stress between 9.9 and 14.5 percentage points. This finding is robust across a battery of quasi‐experimental methods. The effect of informal caregiving on financial stress is more pronounced among males, rural residents and those living in low socioeconomic areas. Our analyses further show that financial fragility and social isolation are important channels through which informal caregiving affects financial stress.

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非正式护理和财务压力：来自澳大利亚的纵向证据

过去几年，提供非正式护理的人数大幅增加，与此同时，大约四分之一的澳大利亚人面临经济压力问题。本研究利用澳大利亚家庭、收入和劳动力动态 (HILDA) 调查的丰富纵向数据来估计非正式护理对财务压力的影响。为了建立因果关系，我们利用固定效应工具变量方法来解决遗漏变量偏差和反向因果关系问题。我们的研究结果表明，非正式护理会使财务压力增加 9.9 至 14.5 个百分点。这一发现在一系列准实验方法中都是可靠的。非正式护理对经济压力的影响在男性、农村居民和生活在社会经济地位较低地区的人中更为明显。我们的分析进一步表明，财务脆弱性和社会孤立是非正式护理影响财务压力的重要渠道。