Friday, 06 July 2012
New Information on Elder Care
Did you know this? I didn't:
”Every day, Bureau of Labor Statistics interviewers ask Americans to detail how they spent the previous 24 hours, how many minutes and hours they devoted to everything from shopping to child care to phone calls. The results, culled from 12,500 respondents, make up the American Time Use Survey.”
I mean, I knew the BLS regularly collects information about what Americans are doing, but I didn't know they did it so frequently. And, The New York Times tells us, only last year did the BLS begin asking about the amount of time people spend on elder caregiving.
The BLS just released its elder care report for the year 2011 and Paula Span at The Times has some understandable problems with the agency's numbers:
”The survey, we should note,” writes Span, "uses a very broad definition of 'caregiver.' You qualify if you provided unpaid care of any kind (including simple companionship or 'being available to assist when help is needed') more than once in the past three months, regardless of how long you spent at it.
“So a 17-year-old who paid two 20-minute visits to her grandmother since mid-April is, to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an elder care provider.
For me, such loose definitions make it hard to make sense of the entire survey. You can let us know your sense of what an elder care provider is below.
Many Time Goes By readers have been or are full-time caregivers. When it's been discussed here, that has mostly meant round the clock. My personal definition of caregiving is having complete responsibility - whether full-or part-time, living in the same dwelling or apart - being the primary overseer of whatever the care recipient needs.
Among other difficulties with the survey is the interesting statistic that only 56 percent of caregivers are women. I say “only” because it is so unexpected that nearly half are men. But it is either a good development that men are taking a larger part or, like the 17-yeaer-old example above, they're show up for 20 minutes once a month. We have no way to know.
Another statistic that sounds way off to me and I'd like to know more about is that only 4.3 percent of elder care providers are doing so for a spouse or unmarried partner. I'm guessing that number should be much higher and Paula Span agrees:
“If spouses are just doing what they think of as normal household chores — shopping for groceries, preparing meals, doing laundry — they won’t necessarily categorize this as providing unpaid help to someone over age 65. 'It’s hard to distinguish what you’ve always done for someone from elder care,' Ms. Denton acknowledged.”
The entire New York Times story is here. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is here. Take a look and let us know what you think, especially those of you who have experience as caregivers.
At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Johna Ferguson: For Real – Part 2
Posted by Ronni Bennett at 05:30 AM | Permalink | Email this post
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This morning I'm channeling Crabby Old Lady:)My first response is "what a crock...!) I'd like to know how many women participated in designing the questionaire & also how many women are an integral part of the BLS? My fantasy is that the bureaucracy gender will become a 50-50 deal.......Ya Think? Dee
Posted by: Dee | Friday, 06 July 2012 at 06:35 AM
I find all sorts of definitional problems with this. For example, once, or twice, or more, times a year, we travel across country to spend a some weeks with my partner's stepmother. She lives in two great places; we feel lucky to visit her and enjoy her company.
Yet each visit always includes assembling and doing a list of household and other tasks for her that would be hard for her to get done without help. And each visit is followed by a check-in with her other relatives who also visit her periodically.
Is this "elder care" or vacation? It's both.
When my parents were alive, I spent years doing these kinds of visits. Sometimes I'd just hang out; sometimes I'd paint the kitchen. Was this "elder care" or vacation? It was both.
Posted by: janinsanfran | Friday, 06 July 2012 at 07:42 AM
I'm wondering why the survey only counts unpaid caregivers. Many people are unable to take on the fulltime care of a family member without some sort of compensation, especially when the provision of fulltime care requires someone giving up a job.
A friend of mine has an 89 year old mother who still lives alone on a small farm in a remote rural area. My friend has 13 siblings, and among them they have more than 40 adult grandchildren, and there are many teenage and young adult great grandchildren, also. Between all of them, there is almost always someone spending a day or longer at the farm with my friends' mother, but there are also many days when she is there alone. Would all these dozens of people, over age 15 also be counted as caregivers? It seems to me that more work needs to go into getting a handle on the information of who's caring for whom, how much time is involved and what sort of tasks are performed. I'm still curious about the "unpaid" part of this. It's almost as though it minimizes the importance and value of the work. If someone would need to pay $4,000+ per month at assisted living (and that's just for pretty basic care with minimal assistance) and the person being cared for prefers to remain at home with one-on-one care, but that requires a family member to be paid, in order to manage the arrangement financially, then why would these people not be counted in the caregivers survey? If outside help were coming in to provide around the clock care, an agency would be charging several thousands of dollars. And it is virtually impossible to find volunteers and/or income-based workers to provide around the clock care for someone who needs it.
Posted by: Cathy | Friday, 06 July 2012 at 04:24 PM
Perhaps by minimizing the care provided by family members, the government is trying justify the fact that paid home-care workers do not receive overtime pay and other protections of the Fair Labor Standards act. The New York Times had an op-ed on July 1, Home-Care Workers Aren’t Just ‘Companions’
By Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein.
Posted by: Nan | Friday, 06 July 2012 at 06:06 PM
If that is the standard, then nearly every thing I do all day is caregiving. No wonder I'm tired!!
Posted by: kenju | Friday, 06 July 2012 at 10:34 PM
With an almost 83-year old husband, I wonder which is a care-gover? He shops, I cook. He takes care of the cars. I clean. If one of us is sick the other does more.
This study does indeed have some flaws. BTW BLS does not conduct surveys. It might pay for them and analyze the data, but the Census Bureau does the survey work (or did). Dianne
Posted by: Dianne | Saturday, 07 July 2012 at 07:20 AM
Care giving is often done out of love instead of paycheck. Why should the work of friends and family be considered any less valuable to society? I do this full-time alone. More of my friends are now caring for family members with dementia. We count our blessings for what we still have instead of grieving for what has been lost. Thanks to Nan for recognizing that unpaid care giving work must not be minimized.
Posted by: Julie | Saturday, 07 July 2012 at 11:11 AM
Do I detect a scintilla of sexism in your article Ronni. If, up until very recently, most married couples consisted of two people of opposite sexes, wouldn't it be expected that if incapacity and illness was distributed evenly by gender, that in roughly half of the cases, a male would be caring for his female partner? Or perhaps you're suggesting that when "honey" gets sick, hubby gets a surrogate care giver?
Posted by: mythster | Sunday, 08 July 2012 at 06:01 AM
Mythster--I would point out that most husbands are older than their wives, and have shorter life expectancies. In my own family (I know/remember about the four generations prior to my own) long-term care has always involved women who cared for their mothers.
Posted by: Cop Car | Sunday, 08 July 2012 at 07:00 AM
P.S. I should have noted that the men died suddenly - with no need for long-term care.
Posted by: Cop Car | Sunday, 08 July 2012 at 07:02 AM