Informal Caregiving for Older Americans: An Analysis of the 2011 National Health and Aging Trends Study
Executive Summary
April 2014
Brenda C. Spillman, Ph.D. Urban Institute
Jennifer Wolff, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Vicki A. Freedman, Ph.D. University of Michigan
This report examines the role and experiences of informal caregivers for the older population, using a
new resource, the National Survey of Caregiving (NSOC). The NSOC is unique in interviewing all
informal caregivers for a nationally representative sample of persons age 65 or older receiving
assistance with daily activities. NSOC respondents r
Older adults, people with disabilities, and those who provide services and supports to these individuals utilize a variety of aging services technologies (ASTs) to achieve and maintain maximum physical function, to live as independently as possible, to study and learn, and to participate in and contribute to society. The potential benefits offered
This study assessed a variety of longitudinal models to examine the effect of different types of caregiver burden on outcomes important to policymakers: nursing home admissions, hospital use, and stability of the family and formal care networks. Analyses were carried out on the 1982 National Long-Term Care Survey (NLTCS) and the 1984 NLTCS Longitu
Understanding the role of informal caregiving in preventing or delaying nursing home entry among chronically disabled elders is increasingly important for policy. Continued aging of the population and other demographic shifts are likely to increase the caregiving burden for a smaller number of caregivers per elder in the coming decades.
This study investigated factors associated with the decisions of principal informal caregivers of the activity of daily living (ADL) dependent elderly living in the community to end caregiving. Data were from the 1982 National Long-Term Care Survey (NLTCS), the 1982 Informal Caregiver Survey and 1984 NLTCS Longitudinal Follow-up.
Three studies sponsored by HHS confirm previous research linking health impairment levels, advanced age, and various indicators of caregivers' physical burden and emotional stress with individual caregivers' decisions to stop giving care and increased likelihood of nursing home placement. In contrast, the lack of association between caregivers' em
The 1989 National Long Term Care Survey is the first nationally representative survey to collect data on weekly hours of assistance received by ADL and/or IADL disabled elders living in the community by individual caregivers, both formal and informal. Thus, it is now possible to investigate the effects of primary caregivers' employment status on t
This research was designed to answer current questions surrounding long-term care insurance. It was also designed to provide basic sociodemographic and service utilization profiles for disabled private long-term care insurance policyholders, and to compare such data and findings to the experiences of non-insured disabled community-dwelling elders.
In 1985 there were about 5.5 million functionally disabled elderly persons (65+) in the United States (U.S.) living in the community and an additional 1.3 million in nursing homes. By 2020, these figures are expected to almost double to 10.1 million and 2.5 million respectively. The long-term care (LTC) system in the U.S. is large and complex.
Cash and Counseling, an innovative model of consumer direction, has been implemented as a three-state demonstration designed to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of allowing Medicaid beneficiaries to assume more responsibility for the supportive services they may need.
This booklet, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is about informal caregiving unpaid care given voluntarily to ill or disabled persons by their families and friends. Informal caregiving by families and friends is the backbone of America's long-term care system. According to recent surveys sponsored by HHS, 52 m
An important component of the ASPE Health (Promotion and Aging Project is the development of such an inventory of health promotion, disease prevention, and health education activities targeted at informal caregivers for HHS. The specific focus of this report is to highlight some state and local initiatives that have developed promising programs to
For all estimates, we use the analytic weights that take into account differential probabilities of selection and non-response at the NHATS sample person and caregiver level (Kasper et al. 2013a) and statistical software that adjusts standard errors for survey design.