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Elderly Care Takes High Toll in Earnings
Erica Noonan
The Associated Press
Boston – Two-thirds of those acting as caregivers for elderly relatives lose out at work by forgoing promotions, pay raises and training opportunities, a new study suggests.
The study, conducted by the National Center for Women and Aging at Brandeis University and the National Alliance for Caregivers, focused on 55 people who spent more than eight hours per week providing unpaid care.
Among the 30 subjects who could provide detailed financial information, the average loss over a lifetime was $659,139 in wages, pension and Social Security benefits, according to results to be released today.
Although the study involved relatively few participants, it was the first to detail financial losses for caregivers, said Dr. Phyllis Mutschler, executive director of the National Center for Women and Aging.
Because three-fourths of caretakers are women, the financial burden rests disproportionately on them, Mutschler said.
"We haven’t decided as a society who should shoulder these burdens," she said.
Previous studies have largely focused on what it would cost to replace a caregiver, not on losses suffered by the individual providing the care, she said.
"I think caregivers will be aghast," Mustschler said. "This is a store of wealth, a loss that continually occurs."
"Once a person has fallen off an earning trajectory, they don’t tend to regain ground."
"From the time of retirement to when they die, caregivers will have fewer benefits."
The project’s participants came from a 1997 study of 1,509 people which found that one in four families had at least one member who had provided care for an elderly relative or friend in the past year.
The 55 subjects were all over age 45 and had provided either physical or administrative care for their parents, spouse, sibling or friend for an average of eight years.
From the November 29, 1999 edition of The Denver Post
Elderly Caregivers More Likely to Die
Spouses who provide care report high stress levels
By Brenda C. Coleman
The Associated Press
"This is the first demonstration that caregiving can lead to mortality," said the leader of the study, Richard Schulz, a psychiatry professor and director of the University Center for Social & Urban Research at the University of Pittsburgh.
Researchers tracked 819 spouses, ages 66 to 95. A total of 317 were responsible for helping a spouse move around the house, eat or go to the bathroom, or handled the partner’s laundry, housework or shopping.
Of those 316 caregivers, 179 reported strain. The strained caregivers had higher levels of depression and were less likely to get enough exercise and rest or to see a doctor when they were sick.
"My hunch is that these people are frail. They’re relatively old. They have their own health problems, generally," Schulz said.
Past studies have suggested that loss, prolonged distress, the physical demands of caregiving and the biological vulnerability of older people may lead to health problems in elderly caregivers, the researchers noted in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The spouses who needed care suffered from such ailments as arthritis, congestive heart failure, strokes and Alzheimer’s disease.
The strained caregivers, like the spouses studied, died of such things as heart disease, stroke, cancer, pneumonia and kidney failure.
Stephen McConnell, vice president for public policy at the Alzheimer’s Association, said the study underscores the need to support caregivers. He noted that Medicare covers elderly caregivers if they get sick but does not pay for relief help that could keep them from falling ill.
"It’s a short-sighted policy," he said.
In the study, 103 deaths occurred among subjects. That included 40 (9.4 percent) of 427 participants whose spouses were not disabled at the study’s outset; 13 (17.3 percent) of 75 subjects who had disabled spouses but were not caregivers;
19 (13.8 percent) of 138 subjects who were providing care and were not strained: and 31 (17.3 percent) of the 179 who were providing care and reported strain from it.
After taking into account factors that could affect the likelihood of dying, researchers estimated that strained caregivers were 63 percent more likely to die within four years than other spouses, caregivers or not.
From the Saturday, December 18, 1999 edition of The Denver Post
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