Spouses and Children of Disabled Elders: How Large a Constituency for Long-Term Care Reform?

Abstract

Over 13 million adults in the United States have disabled elderly parents or spouses and are potential providers of long-term care, financial assistance, or emotional support. Articles in the popular press notwithstanding, data from the 1984 National Long-term Care Survey indicate that a relatively small number of adult children and spouses assume the multiple responsibilities of elder care and child care or employment. These individuals form a subset of a much larger group of 4.2 million persons, however, who care for disabled parents or spouses. Current and future availability of spouses and children need to be considered in estimating the demand for formal long-term care and the costs of public programs.

Older adults in the division of domestic labor in communities on the outskirts of Beirut

“…The score for involvement in household tasks was consistently higher for older women than older men across all study variables (see Table 4). Similar to what has been previously published on the effect of household size on older adults' contribution to domestic labor (Stone and Kemper 1990), our results showed that older women were less involved in household tasks in larger households (score = 23.6 in households with 7+ members, while score = 37.4 in households with 2-6 members). The higher the educational level of older men and women, the higher was their participation in household tasks.…”

Potential and Active Family Caregivers: Changing Networks and the ‘Sandwich Generation’

“…We have further adjusted these weights to be consistent with the Census Bureau definitions of institutional residence. Differences in our 1984 estimates relative to similar estimates appearing in Stone and Kemper (1989) are the result of slightly different weighting. We reestimated all 1984 numbers to ensure consistent methodology across the two years.…”

“…Spouses and children are the majority of active informal caregivers to disabled elders. Three-fifths of the 7.3 million active informal caregivers in 1984 were spouses or children of the care recipient (Stone and Kemper 1989). That proportion had increased to two-thirds by 1994 (Spector, Fleishman, Pezzin, et al 1998).…”

“…Any increase in the level of disability among the disabled also could imply greater burdens on affected families and public programs. Thus, there is a pressing need for information on how disability is changing and how families are responding to those changes.We rely on the 1984 and 1994 National Long Term Care Surveys (NLTCS) to update the estimates of potential and active family caregivers presented by Stone and Kemper (1989) and to examine changes over the decade in informal family caregiving. We use consistent methodology to measure the prevalence of chronic disability among the elderly in each year and the distribution of the disabled elderly by receipt of informal and formal care and by the presence of spouses or children who might provide care.…”

Long-Term Care Research and Policy

“…For example, contrary to the belief of some that family caregiving is declining, research on informal caregiving identified the extensive amount of LTC that family members not only have provided historically but continue to provide (Spillman & Pezzin, 2000;Stone, Cafferata, & Sangl, 1987;Stone & Kemper, 1989). This is not an isolated example.…”