A nation of caregivers: past, present, and future expectations of caregiving

Record numbers of Americans are living with serious illness and disability. Increasingly, older adults and persons with disability will be responsible for managing and financing their care needs into older age, putting more onus on individuals and their families to arrange care. Understanding the current and expected caregiving landscape can inform efforts to prepare for future population needs.

We used nationally representative survey data collected in Spring 2025 (N = 2020) to estimate the prevalence of past, current, and expected future caregiving and examine the association of sociodemographic characteristics and caregiving responsibilities using logistic regression.

We found that one in four U.S. adults reported caregiving within the last year, and most (60%) expected future caregiving responsibilities, corresponding to over 155 million adults. After adjusting for socioeconomic characteristics, the strongest positive predictors of expected caregiving were prior or current caregiving experiences. We found no significant difference in anticipated future caregiving across political ideology.

Our findings collectively underscore the universality of caregiving, and, within the context of scarce long-term care insurance uptake and declining funding for Medicaid, amplify the importance of scaling policies that support current and future family caregivers who provide the bulk of long-term care in the United States.