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Stressed Baby Boomers Miss Work To Care For Family Members

By MATTHEW STURDEVANT
The Hartford Courant April 23, 2010

Baby boomers are getting stressed out by caring for an ill or injured parent or other family member while balancing a full-time job, and as a result they're missing work themselves, according to a new survey by The Hartford and a major provider of employee-assistance programs.

"Our research found a troubling trend of baby boomer caregivers being pushed to their limits," said Barbara Campbell, regional vice president of the Group Benefits Division at The Hartford Financial Services Group.

 The survey of 862 people born between 1946 and 1964 found that a majority of boomers are stressed out about caring for a child, parent or spouse. They're also worried about how their job is affected by caring for someone at home.

 More than half of boomers 55 and older and 68 percent of younger boomers, 45 to 54, say they have missed work or left work early in the past six months because of responsibilities as a caregiver.

 Additionally, boomers take more leave due to their own illness — of which stress is a contributing factor — than any other age group, according to a separate study of 91,000 workers at 171 businesses that contract with The Hartford for employee-benefits packages.

 Campbell suggests that employers can help relieve pressure felt by boomers who are caregivers.

"We hope to raise awareness among employers about this risk to their employees' health and productivity because they play a key role in bringing workers' lives back into balance," Campbell said.

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Employed caregivers find it more difficult than non-caregivers to take care of their own health or participate in preventive health screenings. For example, women caregivers were less likely to report annual mammograms than non-caregivers. Employed caregivers of all ages and
gender defer preventive health screenings as well.

The relationship between employment and caregiving is complex. Taking on the caregiving role for an ill or disabled relative may depend on whether or not the individual is employed, how flexible his or her job is, and how intensive the demands of the caregiving are. Employed caregivers with little flexibility in their jobs who
are faced with intensive caregiving needs may be less likely to take on the caregiving role, or are more likely to reluctantly leave the workforce to accommodate their caregiving demands.

The MetLife study, Sons at Work: Balancing Employment and Eldercare, showed that men share many of the same difficulties with caregiving identified by working women. Once caregiving has started, more than six out of 10 (62%) caregivers say that they make some sort of workplace accommodation, such as going in late/leaving early, taking a leave of absence, or dropping back to part-time.

The 2009 National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP national caregiver survey, Caregiving in the U.S. (funded by MetLife Foundation), reports that 73% of family caregivers say that they are employed full- or part-time,1 while others suggest that this figure might be as low as 38%.2

Employed caregivers seem to be able to provide care to someone for 14 hours or less per week (considered a low level of caregiving) with little impact on their ability to stay on the job.

However, providing 20 hours or more per week often results in major work adjustments, such as cutting back on hours or stopping work altogether, and the decline in annual income that goes with that work adjustment.
 
Finally, data on the cost effects of caregiving on business and industry are scarce. The primary resource on this topic is The MetLife Caregiving Cost Study: Productivity Losses to U.S. Business.6
Using caregiver prevalence estimates derived from the study, the authors estimate a cost to employers of $17.1 to $33.6 billion annually attributable to caregiving. These costs are due primarily to absenteeism ($5.1 billion), shifts from full-time to part-time work ($4.8 billion), replacing employees ($6.6 billion), and workday interruptions ($6.3 billion).