Title:	Family Caregiving in Aging Populations
Authors:	Twyla J. Hill
Keywords:	Family
Issue Date:	2015
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	Americans are living longer than in the past and the percentage of the population that is 65 years old and older is rapidly increasing. The aging of the US pokpulation will have major impacts on family life in the twenty-first century. Older people are growing in number and also as a percentage of the American population. Since health problems tend to increase in later life, the rising proportion of the elderly has led to concerns about their impact on the health care system as a whole as well as on the costs associated with Medicare and Medicaid. Most of the assistance needed by older persons actually is provided outside of the formal health care network; however, over 75% of all help to the elderly is given by family and friends (Levine, Halper, Peist, and Gould 2010). In 2009, unpaid caregivers provided an estimated $450 billion worth of care1 (Feinberg, Reinhard, Houser, and Choula 2011). This number will continue to increase, as both needing care and providing care became more common stages of the life course in the twentieth century (Dwyer and Coward 1992; also see Silverstein and Giarrusso 2010). Current initiatives to decrease the cost of Medicare and other health care programs should increase demands on unpaid caregivers. Therefore, family members will be increasingly likely to provide health care for the disabled or frail older adults in this century (Himes 2001). The provision of this elder care has important implications for public policy, families, and individual lives, all of which is described in this book on family caregiving in aging populations. This book focuses on the care that older persons provide to individuals their age or older. It does not cover the help that people give to younger generations, such as grandparents raising grandchildren or elderly parents taking care of a developmentally disabled adult child. Those types of care are important, but this book is about the assistance given to older persons who have health problems. I am particularly interested in those Americans 50 years and older who provide care to relatives who are 65 years and older. Research on family caregiving generally specifies the age of the care recipient, not the age of the person who provides the care, however. Also, scholars have tended to focus on the need for the care of people 65 years and over (Silverstein and Giarrusso 2010) and not on the amount of care they provide. Older adults are often caregivers. Close to half (almost 45%) of primary caregivers to other elders are 65 years and older (Wolff and Kasper 2006)—seniors assisting other seniors. While many of these care providers are spouses, more are adult children (Wolff and Kasper 2006).
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/53655
ISBN:	978-1-349-50656-9
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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