News Release
Cost of Informal Caregiving for U.S. Elderly Is $522 Billion Annually
Oct 27, 2014
Informal caregiving remains a significant phenomenon in the United States with a high opportunity cost, although it remains more economical (in the aggregate) than skilled paid care.
New Estimates from the American Time Use Survey
Published in: HSR, Health Services Research, v. 50, no. 3, June 2015, p. 871-882
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
OBJECTIVES: To provide nationally representative estimates of the opportunity costs of informal elder-care in the United States. DATA SOURCES: Data from the 2011 and 2012 American Time Use Survey. STUDY DESIGN: Wage is used as the measure of an individual's value of time (opportunity cost), with wages being imputed for nonworking individuals using a selection-corrected regression methodology. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The total opportunity costs of informal elder-care amount to $522 billion annually, while the costs of replacing this care by unskilled and skilled paid care are $221 billion and $642 billion, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Informal caregiving remains a significant phenomenon in the United States with a high opportunity cost, although it remains more economical (in the aggregate) than skilled paid care.
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
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