Fact Sheet: Cohort Differences in Parental Care Needs

There has been considerable concern about the availability of informal and especially family care when the baby boom cohorts reach old age (Ryan and Smith et al., 2012). However, as care needs typically arise in late old age (age 70 or later), a more immediate issue is the care burden faced by the baby boomer cohorts themselves as their parents now reach late old age. To assess the potential care burden faced by baby boom adult children one first needs to assess their parents’ care needs. Such assessment is also essential as research shows that parental care needs do not only affect the caregivers themselves but also the whole family network (Amirkhanyan and Wolf, 2003). Non-caregiving family members, such as siblings of caregiving adult children, can be adversely affected by the caregiving situation. In order to see if parental care needs have changed over time, we explored cohort differences in care needs among baby boomers’ parents using nationally representative data from 1992 through 2010