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Elder Care News
Unpaid Caregiving Extracts Hidden Costs from Labor
Force, Economy
Hard-pressed caregivers often first to drop out of
labor force
By Taunya English, Associate Editor
Health Behavior News Service
Dec. 7, 2007 - People who provide intensive and
time-consuming care to others at home - such as assisting with feeding,
bathing and toileting - are the caregivers who are most vulnerable to
dropping out of the labor force, according to a new systematic review of
studies on unpaid caregivers.
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The workforce participation of caregivers who
provide occasional assistance is very different from those who spend
many hours tending a family member or loved one, according to lead
review author Meredith Lilly.
“People who drive someone to a doctor’s appointment
or make meals once or twice a week — those people really seem to be
managing it all,” Lilly said. “The people that can’t are those who are
providing very intensive care. They are a subset of caregivers who often
live with the care recipient, and I would argue that they are the group
we need to be worried about.”
Decision makers who are creating health and
workplace policies should consider that distinction, said Lilly, a
researcher in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation
at the University of Toronto.
The review analyzed 35 studies of unpaid caregivers
and found that they are as likely as other people are to hold paid jobs
outside the home. However, unpaid caregivers are more likely to make
subtle workplace changes such as working from home or reducing work
hours.
Lilly and her team argue that the outside
employment of unpaid caregivers is critical to an individual’s financial
security and a nation’s economy.
The review appears in the December 2007 issue of
The Milbank Quarterly.
A caregiver who withdraws from the labor market
could be putting his or her lifetime earning potential and
retirement-savings opportunities at risk, while employers might be
losing valuable workers.
“Health care decision makers are looking at unpaid
caregivers as a vast source of free labor that may ease the health care
crisis. I think that perspective on solving the health system financing
crunch is shortsighted,” Lilly said.
The approach could jeopardize the broader economy
and individual caregivers, she added.
“A nation’s productivity and tax base to pay for
social services is based on the number of workers who are available in
the labor force,” she said.
Existing policies like the U.S. Family and Medical
Leave Act protect people who need to leave their job temporarily.
“If you aren’t leaving, you aren’t eligible,” Lilly
said. “So the people who are reducing their time a little bit or
juggling their schedules — they are left high and dry.”
Lilly says caregivers should receive help to
balance that juggling act while they stay on the job.
“North American employers are terrified they will
not have workers in the coming generations, so providing supports that
keep people employed makes sense. It’s the direction that the UK and
Europe are going,” Lilly said. “In the UK, parents of young children
have the legal right to work flexible hours, and the country is
considering similar measures for caregivers.”
Work and health researcher Pat Armstrong says there
is little information about the full cost of unpaid caregiving.
Armstrong is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at York
University in Toronto.
“Spending 10 hours providing care at home then
going to work makes for a very long workday; it’s associated with higher
rates of accidents and lower productivity. For caregivers, we don’t have
very good data, in terms of those who stay in the labor force, their
health and what kind of work do they do while they are there,” she said.
A true calculation of the cost of unpaid care
giving has to weigh more than wages and pensions, she said.
“Somebody pays. We are starting to see that it’s a
shared cost. In the question of payment, we need to include more than
money, things like health. Ten years from now, what does that mean on
the collective burden that society will have to bear? Someone’s got to
pay for the care for the caregiver,” Armstrong said.
Information Source:
Lilly MB, Laporte A, Coyte PC. Labor market work
and home care’s unpaid caregivers: a systematic review of labor force
participation rates, predictors of labor market withdrawal, and hours of
work. The Milbank Quarterly 85(4) 641-90, 2007.
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