Identifying Future Caregivers via Current Social and Economic Resources

With smaller family sizes and increased longevity, more adults live into late old age in a context with fewer available family caregivers. Acknowledging that social services and policies take time to develop and implement, identifying members of the next generation of caregivers and anticipating their service needs become an important endeavor. Using data from the 2022 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we applied multinomial logistic regression analyses to identify theoretically relevant variables that differentiate among current caregivers (n = 19,662), those who anticipate becoming caregivers in the near future (n = 10,258), those who are unsure of their near-future caregiving status (n = 5,214) and those who are certain they will not be providing caregiving assistance in the next few years (n = 62,780). Although age, sex, and race each emerged as a significant regressor, the pattern of those associations differed by anticipated caregiving status. For example, although those who anticipate being caregivers (OR = .99) and those who are certain they will not be caregivers (OR = 1.0) are younger than current caregivers, those who are unsure (OR = 1.01) were significantly older than current caregivers. We also note that those who were unsure regarding their future caregiving status were significantly less likely to identify as white non-Hispanic than current caregivers (OR = 1.51). Challenges related to economic Social Determinants of Health were higher for current than for anticipated (OR = .89), unsure (OR = .76), and those not anticipating becoming a caregiver (OR = .73). Our results speak to the need to plan for the needs of future caregivers, who may be more diverse than current caregivers.