Journal article: This paper deals with the question of the relative contribution of spouses to the long-term care (LTC) needs of their dependent parents and parents in-law. Starting from a theoretical model and using SHARE data, the paper focuses on the role of gender and blood relationships as well as the effect of differential opportunity costs within the couple. The results tend to confirm the existence of gender and blood biases in the level of informal care provided by each spouse, while their wage does not seem to play a large role. When we consider the relative level of informal care by spouses, the gender and blood biases are confirmed. Furthermore, the wage ratio is negatively related to the informal care ratio. These results imply that informal care and private insurance coverage may depend on the gender composition of children, which may justify differentiated public LTC transfers.