Unpaid Caregivers Make Huge Economic Contribution, But We Can't Count on It In the Future

A new AARP report called “The Aging of the Baby Boom and the Growing Care Gap,”offers some striking data about the impending shortage of caregivers for elders in the U.S. - and calls attention to the staggeringly large economic contributions made by unpaid caregivers.

This article, "Huge shortage of caregivers looms for baby boomers, report says" summarizes some of the key findings of the AARP report.  Here are a few data points from the report that will particularly interest you as a Caring Economy Conversation Leader:

• There are 42.1 million adults in the United States caring for friends or family members. 
• Nearly two-thirds of those caregivers are women, and more than 80 percent of the people they care for are over 50
• the “average” family caregiver is a 49-year-old woman who works outside the home and spends about 20 hours a week caring for her mother without pay.

And, wrap your head around this statistic:  The unpaid care work contributed by Baby Boomers caring for friends and family is estimated to have been worth the equivalent of $450 billion in 2009, more than the cost of Medicaid and approaching the cost of Medicare.

Yowsa!

The central point of the article is that the number of available caregivers for elders is shrinking rapidly (due to the large number of baby boomers, the fact that boomers had relatively fewer children than earlier generations, and increased longevity), so we will not be able to count on this kind of massive economic contribution by unpaid caregivers going forward.  

This means we must be working now to develop policies that will both support those who do provide unpaid care and develop other ways to ensure that our elders are cared for.  Surely an important cause for anyone advocating for a Caring Economy!