The impact of Care Services on Conflicts in Elderly Famillies: Focusing on the Mediationg Effects of Depression and the Moderating Effects of Self-Esteem

This study aims to investigate the impact of care services on family conflict, as well as to analyze the mediating effect of depression and the moderating effect of self-esteem.For this purpose, the study utilized data from the 16th and 18th waves of the Korea Welfare Panel Survey.Care service utilization was set as the independent variable.At the same time, gender, age, education level, marital status, religion, health status, and income level were controlled variables, and family conflict was designated as the dependent variable.Results indicated that the effect of elder care service utilization on family conflict was verified by comparing data from 2021 and 2023.It was confirmed that the use of elder care services effectively alleviates family conflict as perceived by the elderly.The moderating effect of self-esteem was also confirmed; however, elder depression was found not to have an impact.Notably, the moderating effect of self-esteem in the group, which was tracked from 2021 using the same sample (633 individuals), was 0.253, which was greater than the 0.125 observed in the control group that was not tracked with the same sample.Based on these findings, this study provides policy recommendations for alleviating family conflict among the elderly.