WUNRN
The Caregiving Crunch
In
By Lillian Zimmerman
Most
of these caregivers are mid-life baby boomers who are still in the paid workforce
and inching toward their pre-retirement years. Many of them find themselves
curtailing their paid work in various ways, such as working fewer hours or
leaving paid work earlier than planned in order to attend to unpaid caregiving
responsibilities. As a result, however, such caregivers will have less
financial security in their retirement than they may have expected.
The
financial vulnerability of these caregivers will be exacerbated by the recent
increase in the age of the Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income
Supplement (GIS) benefits from age 65 to 67. Women’s pensionable earnings are
already stretched due to their caregiving roles in their younger years, and now
they will have to work two years longer before qualifying for OAS and GIS. The
trends do not look good for women, according to Dr. Janet Fast, a professor in
the department of human ecology at the
“The
demand for care is likely going to rise,” she says. “It’s the oldest-old
segment that’s growing fastest … and they are people who are likely to require
care.”
She
further predicts that “since families are smaller, they face more multiple
demands and may be geographically distant, [which] means the probability of any
one family member or close friend becoming a caregiver is going to be higher.”
Canadian
women live to 83 years on average, while men live to 78 years. Women in
Retirement
and other feminist issues tend to coincide with life stages. Younger women tend
to be concerned with wage equity, affordable daycare and reproductive rights.
Mid-life women face ageism, getting suitable jobs and breaking glass ceilings.
With boomers reaching retirement, it is now time for the issues facing older
women to get greater attention from feminists. The first boomers reached 65 in
2011, and, since women live longer and provide most unpaid care, unpaid
caregiving is certainly a women’s issue.
The
four million female baby boomers represent a generation that faces a growing
need for caregiving. Dr. Janice
Keefe
of Mount St. Vincent University reported in a 2011 study, “Supporting
Caregivers and Caregiving in an Aging Canada,” that the number of elderly
Canadians needing assistance will double in the next 30 years. Informal
caregivers, Keefe explains, “are family members, friends or neighbours, most
frequently women, who provide unpaid care to a person who needs support …
sometimes for an extended period.” Of the more than 2.3 million employed family
or friend caregivers in
Gerontologist
Dr. Neena Chappell, of the
Myrna
is typical. At 62, she has looked after both parents. When her mother was
widowed, Myrna, who had a nursing degree, continued caregiving. She describes
herself as a “serial caregiver.” When asked her how she managed both to work
and to provide care, Myrna replies, “My corporate career came to a smashing
end.” She switched to lower-paid jobs because she couldn’t meet the shift work
demands of nursing. “I can now never retire, because all my resources have
dwindled,” adds Myrna, who was recently laid off from her clerical position.
Canadian
women have long been familiar with the inequities in the paid workforce. While
the wage gap is closing, women now receive approximately 73 cents on the dollar
of what working men receive. About a third of women still work part-time, and
many women continue to work in the low-paying service sector. In addition to
low
pay, these jobs afford few benefits, such as pensions.
In
other words, most women can ill afford to give up their economic security to
look after aging parents or other needy family members. The trend towards
smaller families is also a factor. It means a shrinking pool of caregivers.
The
fact is that caregiving comes at a high cost to many women, who feel they must
curtail their paid work. Karen, 59, looked after her 87-year-old mother, who
fell and broke her hip years ago. After the incident, Karen’s mother moved in
with Karen and her husband. Karen, an actor, says her caregiving
responsibilities require her to confine herself to occasional TV roles, as she
is unable to take on stage roles that would require scheduled attendance. “I
can’t chase after roles, and it is hard to go to auditions.”
At
the same time, her social life is constrained, as she and her husband rarely
enjoy a dinner or a movie out of the house. “I have learned to live frugally,”
Karen explains. “We had to use our RRSPs, so won’t have enough pension later
on.”
Women
are, by and large, not financially equipped to look after their elders,
especially given the inequities faced by senior women. The cold hard fact is
that 17 percent of single Canadian women 65 years and older and living alone
are at or below the poverty line. In
For
example, 62 percent of women aged 70 to74 are recipients. A look at the Canada
Pension Plan (CPP) reveals the gender difference in the receipt of plan
benefits. In 2011, Canadian men’s average monthly retirement benefit from the
CPP was $603.51. For women it was a paltry $420.06.
The
gap has remained constant for many years. These benefits clearly represent a
culmination of the inequities women suffer, both in the paid and unpaid work
they do.
What
is to be done? Often mentioned is more respite care, drop-out arrangements, tax
credits or extended leaves. It’s been a decade since Roy Romanow’s 2002 Royal
Commission on the Future of Health Care in
One
solution is to make pensionable benefits available to caregivers for their
unpaid work. A study paper in April 2010 on family caregiving, published by the
Canadian Centre for Elder Law, found that “the pension regime currently
provides little or no recognition to the unpaid family caregiving of adults.”
It suggested the creation of a caregiver-specific pension.
There
are already programs addressing such pensionable benefits in
It
is not only the invisibility of unpaid work that demands recognition. On a
larger economic scale, the many productive contributions of older Canadians are
ignored due to the ageist belief that older people take from the economy,
rather than give to it.
And
yet, the reality is that seniors are among the largest groups of Canadian
volunteers. They give generously to charities. They pay taxes on their income,
including most of their pension income. Seniors also help to provide for their
financially strapped adult children, especially in times of unemployment and
recessions. Many grandparents also provide child care for their grandchildren,
and many financially support their grandchildren’s educational and sports fees.
Demographic
changes affecting aging women make it imperative that social policy-makers
recognize that ageism and sexism are a destructive combination. The four
million Canadian female baby boomers have enough collective political clout to
make policy-makers listen. A vibrant women’s revolution, led by boomer
activism, is what it will take to force policy developers to address the
current and future needs of women as they age. As Dr. Carroll Estes, a
professor at the
Lillian Zimmerman is research associate with the Gerontology
Research Centre at
-This article was
published in the Winter 2013 issue of Herizons.