BioMed
An aging population increases demand for paid and unpaid care work.
When family caregivers get no income support, health insurance or relief, some come to think about the death of the person they love simply because they cannot picture carrying on. That despair is a sign that the support system has failed, not a sign of failed love.
The most valuable things a care worker gives are compassion, tenderness and listening, beyond help with eating and bathing. Good care means daily company that is built on trust.
The fastest-growing age group is people over eighty-five, the group most likely to need daily help, and it is expected to more than double in about twenty years. An aging society therefore needs far more hands-on care, not just more pensions, and it needs that care to arrive soon.
A large share of family caregivers are looking after aging parents while still raising or supporting their own children. They stretch their time, money and energy in both directions at once.
Care work has long gone unrecognized as real work. It produces no profit for anyone, and it has mostly been done by women. Because it is invisible to the economy, paid care workers are left out of labor protections and family caregivers are left out of support.
Most older people want to stay in their own homes inside a dependable circle of care. Trained professional caregivers working in the home can make that possible with dignity, and it can keep families from having to choose between a parent's wishes and their own survival.
Elder care is tied to the rights of women, immigrants and all workers, because these are the people who do the caring. A single set of policies can serve all of them together: long-term care insurance, a stronger safety net, and good jobs in caregiving.
A society that properly values and pays for care can turn a growing older population into millions of new jobs. Many of those jobs would go to women, immigrants and unemployed people.
People living longer is a gift, and calling it a crisis comes from a bleak view of old age and caregiving. Treating the extra years as a chance for full lives changes what a society builds for its elders.
Programs that combine public health coverage for older people with all-inclusive, preventive care help them stay well and at home. Such programs are a working model of the policy that is needed, and they already run in a number of places.