Women Caregivers Are More Likely To Face Poverty

In recent years, public and private agencies have sought ways to lower costs by shifting the burden of elder care to families, but according to a study by Rice sociologists, the consequences may prove less than beneficial for women caregivers.

Using data from the 1992 and 2000 Health and Retirement Studies, associate professor of sociology Katharine Donato and postdoctoral student Chizuko Wakabayashi analyzed the long-term financial effects of caring for elderly parents, approximately 80 percent of which is now being provided by family members, mostly women. The Health and Retirement Study is an ongoing national longitudinal survey conducted every two years by the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center and the National Institute on Aging.

Donato and Wakabayashi found that caregivers were somewhat more likely than noncaregivers to have less than a high-school education, and they were significantly more likely to be single. They also found that women who assumed caregiver roles were 2.5 times more likely than noncaregivers to live in poverty and five times more likely to receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a federal income supplement that provides cash benefits to the aged, permanently blind, and totally disabled whose annual incomes are well below the federal poverty line.
“The potential economic and social consequences of informal elder care for these women may be enormous,” Donato says, noting that approximately 45 percent of females who are 18 or older are not currently married, and many simultaneously assume roles of both earners and caregivers. However, the time spent taking care of elderly parents is likely to compete with women’s employment opportunities, creating losses in work hours and earnings. The cumulative effect of this scenario contributes to elderly women’s disproportionately higher risk of living in poverty. In 2002, 14 percent of women 75 or older lived in poverty in contrast to only 8 percent of comparably aged men. “The adverse impact of caregiving was especially severe for women who took on this role in their early 60s,” Donato says.

The researchers used their data to predict whether and how the caregiving experience affects the likelihood of living in poverty and receiving SSI. Compared to those who completed high school, women caregivers with less than a high-school education were three times more likely to live in poverty and 10 times more likely to be SSI recipients. Unmarried caregiving women were four times more likely to live in poverty and 46 percent more likely to rely on SSI in later life than were married women. And the predicted probability of living in poverty for nonwhite caregivers was 29 percent, compared to only 9 percent for white caregivers.
In a previous study, Donato and Wakabayashi analyzed the substantial reduction in weekly hours worked and annual earnings of women who took time to care for elderly parents. The amount varied according to demographics, but some caregivers experienced a reduction of more than $10,000 in annual earnings. Despite such outcomes, the researchers noted that informal caregiving is still not recognized as a public concern although it is a situation that is likely to increase public expenses in the long run as women assume the responsibility of elder care and increase their risk of poverty and reliance on public assistance.
“What is needed is a system that shares the burden of elder care between private families and state and federal governments,” Wakabayashi says. One way to share the responsibility of elder care might be to offer more home- and community-based services. “The longer we can keep the elderly living in their homes and communities, the more we can control the costs of elder care by postponing or avoiding expensive nursing home placements.” Another strategy for sharing costs might be to provide government compensation to family members—especially low-income earners—who have assumed the role of caregiver.

Donato and Wakabayashi acknowledge that such changes represent a considerable expense for federal and local governments. “But without this intervention,” the researchers state, “more elderly women are certain to live below the poverty threshold in the next 20 years—after caregiving and surviving their parents.”

Donato and Wakabayashi presented their research last fall at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

—B. J. Almond