The
surprising truths about caregivers
Denys Dukhovnov and Emilio Zagheni, University of Washington
Caregiving is a part of daily life for millions of Americans, particularly the so-called sandwich generation balancing the needs of aging parents with looking after their own children.
A new study looks at just who is doing that caregiving, and who
they're caring for -- and some of the findings are surprising.
Published online in Population and Development Review on
June 16, the research is believed to be the first to break down unpaid
caregiving in the United States by age and gender of caregivers and those they
care for, in their own homes or elsewhere.
The study found that almost one-third of the U.S. population are
informal caregivers and collectively provide about 1.2 billion hours of unpaid
work weekly, the equivalent of about 30.5 million full-time care aides. But the
sandwich generation comprises just 3 percent of the population, much less than
researchers anticipated.
The researchers were also surprised to find that elderly people
were frequently being cared for by spouses, not their adult children. About 20
percent of caregiving time spent on people 80 years or older comes from people of
the same age, they found.
'The extent to which spousal care is prevalent at old ages, 70 and 80 years old, was surprising to us,' said lead author Emilio Zagheni, a UW assistant professor of sociology. 'We expected to see more caregiving by adult children of their parents.'
Older men provided slightly more spousal care than women,
Zagheni said, which might be explained by men dying earlier, possibly before
they need much care, and women living longer but being in poor health at older
ages.
And much less caregiving time was spent on elderly people
compared with young children. Across the various age groups, elderly people
received caregiving typically no more than 1.5 hours daily, on average,
compared with six hours for young children.
The unexpectedly small number of sandwich generation caregivers,
Zagheni said, could reflect the fact that while Americans are living longer,
people are also having children later, so the two trends might counterbalance
each other.
'That could be one reason,' he said. 'Or it could be that health
overall is improving, so people at older ages don't need as much help.'
Overall, women continue to shoulder the bulk of the caregiving
burden in most situations. They provide 137 minutes of unpaid caregiving a day
on average, compared with men's 110 minutes. Among the sandwich generation, the
numbers increase to 181 and 157, respectively.
To develop their analyses, Zagheni and co-author Denys
Dukhovnov, a research associate at CUNY Institute for Demographic Research in
New York, looked at three years of data from the American Time Use Survey,
which asks respondents how much time they spent the previous day on various
activities.
Collected in 2011 through 2013, the data reflects responses from
around 36,000 Americans. Zagheni and Dukhovnov broke down responses into
five-year age groups for caregivers and recipients, then developed matrices
showing who gave and received care in specific age ranges.
While other studies have focused on caregiving within the home
or between specific groups, such as middle-aged parents and young children,
most have not looked at caregiving by subgroups of people, or a range of
caregiving scenarios both inside and outside the home -- for example,
babysitting a friend's children or taking a niece or nephew out on weekends.
The study revealed some notable patterns. Childcare occupies a
sizable chunk of time for caregivers of various ages, but particularly women in
their 30s, and to a lesser degree, in their late 50s and older, underscoring
the importance of parenting and grandparenting. And while grandmothers spend
considerable time with grandchildren from birth to age four, grandfathers tend
to steer clear of newborns and spend time with grandchildren aged 5 to 14.
Men aged 60 to 79 spend less than one-third of the time caring
for children from birth to age 4 than women in the same age group do, but spend
slightly more time with children age five to 14. While women spend only
slightly more time with girls than boys, men spend three times the amount of
time with boys as with girls.
The study estimates the value of unpaid care nationwide at $691
billion in 2012, roughly 4.3 percent of the country's GDP.
That figure could
rise to $838.8 billion by 2050, the researchers predict, but if caregiving
continues at current levels, another 1.3 million more care workers could be
needed.
That increased demand, Dukhovnov said, could be partially
addressed through more flexible workplace policies and tax breaks or other
incentives that would better allow people to provide informal caregiving and
continue working.
'Right now, many people must make a choice between staying home
to look after parents or children or working,' he said. 'If people can work
more, that means they're contributing to the overall economy, and helping to
pay for social supports and other care services.'
The U.S., Zagheni said, is currently in a 'golden age' of
caregiving. Gaps between those who need care and those who are available to
provide it are smaller than in the 1950s and '60s, when high birth rates put a
squeeze on caregiver availability, and what we will see in coming years, when
the numbers of elderly Americans are expected to increase dramatically.
'At least from a demographic perspective, there are enough
people in the productive age groups to distribute the work to take care of
those who need it, either children or the elderly,' he said. 'That's not going
to last.'
