You may feel lonely in your caregiving role, but a report released today says you’re not alone.
“Caregiving in the U.S. 2009,” a survey of persons caring for adults, the elderly and children with special needs, found that 29% of the U.S. adult population, or 65.7 million people, are caregivers, including 31% of all households. These caregivers provide an average of 20 hours of care per week.
Among the findings: American caregivers are predominantly female (66%) and are an average of 48 years old. Most care for a relative (86%), most often a parent (36%). Seven in ten caregivers care for someone over age 50. One in seven caregivers provides care, over and above regular parenting, to a child with special needs (14%). Caregiving lasts an average of 4.6 years.
The study also revealed that both caregivers of adults and their care recipients are now older than their counterparts were five years ago. Among caregivers of adults (ages 18 or older), the average age of the caregiver rose from 46 to 49. The change can be attributed to a decline among younger caregivers (those under the age of 50) and a shift upward among caregivers age 50 to 64. Among caregivers of adults, the average care recipient’s age increased from 67 to 69, mainly because of an increase in the percentage age 75 or older (from 43% to 51%).
The main reasons people need care are old age (12%), Alzheimer’s disease (10%), mental/emotional illness (7%), cancer (7%), heart disease (5%) and stroke (5%). However, the list of illnesses/problems for which children need care is quite different. It is led by ADD/ADHD, autism, mental/emotional illness and developmental delay/mental retardation. Caregivers of children provide the most time-intensive care. Increasingly, the study reports, there is a use of prescription medication for adult care recipients.
Caregivers are also receiving more help than they were five years ago, which is encouraging news, since one in six caregivers (17%) report that caregiving has had a negative impact on their health. Since 2004, there has been a sharp increase in the share of caregivers of adults who say they are getting help from other unpaid caregivers, a nine percentage point increase among those not caring for an adult in a nursing home. However, during the same time period, there has been a six percentage point decrease in those who report that their recipient uses paid help, a decrease that could potentially be linked to the recent recession.
For more information about the study, visit National Alliance for Caregiving.
So… What do you think? Do you fit the “profile”? And, does it help to know you have company?
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Yup – I fit – on both ends.
I think that, on a day to day basis, kids do require more care, but on an overall basis, sometimes it evens out. When my senior dad’s Parkinson’s Disease got worse and he was put on hospice – that required round-the-clock care that the grandkids rarely need. So sometimes we can spend more time in short crisis spurts for our aging parents. Either way, it is nice to know we’re not alone. 
Thanks for the interesting article.
I fit. I was going to say I never cared for a child with special needs but I guess I did, I raised my stepdaughter from age 6 to 18 who was bipolar and now that I think about it, she required a ton of attention. Although she could take care of herself, life was a constant battle. With my dad, who was Parkinsons and Dementia, he had to be watched around the clock. So, I’m gonna say I think it evens out. I don’t think one requires more than the other, it just depends on the situation.