Tag Archives for economy

New AARP Report: Unpaid Care Skyrockets to over $1 Trillion

Published in RINewsToday on April 6, 2025

AARP’s latest report reveals a staggering surge in the economic value of unpaid family caregiving, now exceeding $1 trillion. Since 2006, AARP’s Public Policy Institute has tracked this value through its Valuing the Invaluable reports. Last week, at a virtual media briefing, the organization released its seventh report, Valuing the Invaluable 2026: Family Caregivers’ Contribution Reaches $1 Trillion,  delivering a strong message: in 2024, family caregivers provided nearly 50 billion hours of mostly uncompensated care—valued at a whopping $1.01 trillion. Sixteen years earlier, AARP estimated the value of uncompensated care was just $350 billion.

 Building on the previous data, the 9-page report, released on March 26, 2026, by AARP’s Public Policy Institute, emphasizes throughout that caregiving impacts not just families, but also the economy, labor market, and healthcare system.

 It estimates that 59 million caregivers contributed a total of 49.5 billion hours of care each year, valued at $20.41 per hour. Using the Caregiving in the US 2025 data set (which uses new statistical methods that incorporate the range of tasks and support that family caregivers provide), this amounts to about $1.01 trillion annually. For comparison, family caregivers’ economic contribution surpasses the combined federal, state, and local Medicare spending in 2024 ($931.7 billion) and nearly doubles out-of-pocket health care spending ($556.6 billion).

 To further accentuate the magnitude, the report calculates that the nearly 49.5 billion hours of uncompensated care provided annually equal the labor of about 24 million full-time workers—that’s 17% of the nation’s full-time workforce.

According to the AARP report, American adults spend as much time on caregiving duties as on everyday activities, such as housecleaning and preparing meals, and almost twice as much time as they spend on religious activities and volunteering combined.

This unpaid care—delivered by caregivers to older adults, neighbors, and friends—enables millions to remain independent in their homes and communities. The report warns that, without this assistance, millions of Americans would be forced to rely on assisted living or costly nursing facility care, resulting in significantly higher costs for public programs such as Medicaid. However, it also recognizes that this support comes at a steep personal cost to caregivers, often undermining their health, emotional state, financial security, and general well-being.

 Beyond national implications, AARP’s caregivers report also provides state-by-state estimates of the number of caregivers, total hours provided, economic value, and the average hourly value of care.

These state figures, for example, show that the estimated value of caregiving ranges from $14.12 per hour in Louisiana to $27.05 per hour in Washington, reflecting regional differences. In Rhode Island, approximately 155,000 family caregivers provide 111 million hours of unpaid care, valued at $2.8 billion, or about $25.07 per hour.

Continuing this deeper look, the AARP report finds that family caregivers now provide more care than ever, averaging 27 hours per week. More than half—57%—deliver high-intensity care: tasks such as bathing, dressing, wound care, and administering injections.

 Presser Announces New Caregiver Report’s Release

 To explore the report’s findings in greater depth, AARP convened a 40-minute panel moderated by Ilse Zuniga, Director of External Relations. This discussion brought together Dr. Myesha Minter-Jordan (AARP CEO), Nancy LeaMond (Executive Vice President and Chief Engagement Officer), Paula Cunningham (AARP Michigan State Director), Rita B. Choula (Senior Director at AARP’s Public Policy Institute and lead author), and Megan O’Reilly (Government Affairs Department).

During the panel, Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, AARP’s CEO and physician, addressed the 30 journalists present, stating that family caregivers are underwriting a service that millions depend on daily.

 She emphasized that, with family caregiving now exceeding $1 trillion annually, employers, healthcare providers, and policymakers must do more to recognize and support caregivers as they fill essential gaps in the healthcare system.

Dr. Jordan said caregiver stories are powerful and often painful, stressing that AARP is working to magnify these voices and advocate for concrete policies that recognize caregivers’ economic contributions.

 “Given that most Americans will either be a caregiver or need one at some point in their lives, we need to do better,” Dr. Jordan told the journalists.

 “AARP is supporting bold solutions to assist America’s caregivers, says Dr. Jordan. “These include a national paid family and medical leave policy, as well as greater respite services and resources, such as those offered in states through partnerships with United Way and AARP’s 211 Caregiver Support Hotline.”

She concluded that the released report should be a wake-up call and an opportunity for action, hoping that it will drive real, long-lasting change.

Nancy LeaMond, AARP Executive Vice President and Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer, noted, “Caregiving is not simply a family issue; it’s a labor force, economic, and healthcare issue that compels action. Behind every data point is a person—a daughter, husband, grandchild, or neighbor.”  

According to LeaMond, AARP has been working relentlessly to raise caregiving as a national priority and to push for common-sense, bipartisan solutions that can save caregivers time and money.

LeaMond added that the organization has worked to raise the visibility of caregiving, making it a national priority at both the state and federal levels. She noted, “Oklahoma became the first state in 2023 to pass a comprehensive state-wide caregiver tax credit to put money back in the pockets of family caregivers,” with Nebraska following the next year.

Additionally, she stated that 12 other states have considered enacting statewide caregiver tax credit legislation during the 2026 legislative session.

LeaMond further reported that on Capitol Hill, AARP has been advancing legislation such as the Credit for Caring Act, which offers a $5,000 federal tax credit to offset caregiving expenses, and the Lowering Costs for Caregivers Act, which allows family caregivers to use Health Savings Accounts or Flexible Savings Accounts for care expenses for parents.

Paula Cunningham added a personal dimension, relating stories to illustrate the intense, unceasing nature of caregiving. She narrated stories of caregivers forced to draw from their savings or reduce work commitments, such as Deb Conja, an attorney from Okemos, Michigan, who left her job to care for her mother.

She also shared the experience of a Detroit military veteran who, after two tours of service, described caregiving for her mother as the hardest job she’s ever had—an indication of the intensity of these responsibilities.

“Navigating through who to call and when to call, and what kind of services are available is another layer of stress that we’re trying to help reduce,” says Cunningham. She noted that AARP Michigan is calling for funding for a Caregiving Resource Center to provide one-stop online shopping and connect 1.6 million Michigan caregivers across the state with the support services they need.  

 AARP Michigan is also pushing to expand access to funding for home- and community-based services that are necessary for caregivers to stay in the workplace, says Cunningham.

 Finally, during the Q&A, Megan O’Reilly from AARP’s government affairs department responded to Politico journalist Robert King about whether a federal crackdown on fraud in personal care services could undermine governmental efforts to support family caregivers. “Fraud is a crime, and those who commit fraud should be held accountable. But we have to make sure that we’re protecting the care and the need for the essential care and services that our communities and loved ones need to remain at home…,” she said.  

 In response to a question, Rita B. Choula, the AARP report’s lead author, provided extra insights as to how the economic value of care was calculated for the latest report.  

Today, caregiving encompasses much more than just taking someone to a provider’s office, paying bills, or even mowing the lawn, says Choula, noting that the economic value of care must account for the complexity of the care provided.  “Individuals are now doing things in the home that medical providers and professionals were trained to do,” she notes, explaining that these new duties have resulted in using a higher hourly wage to calculate the cost of unpaid care.  

AARP provides resources to help families navigate the myriad of caregiving challenges by connecting them to reliable resources in every state. AARP’s state-by-state Family Caregiver Resource Guides help family caregivers access key programs, services, and agencies right in their community. Additionally, through its partnership with United Way Worldwide, caregivers can access local support services in 28 states by calling 211, including help finding in-home care, respite care, transportation, and other essential services.

A Final Note…

Urgent policy action must be taken by Congress and state legislatures to provide the concrete financial support needed to deliver real financial relief and structural support for America’s caregivers through measures such as tax credits and paid family leave. It is the right thing to do!

COVID-19 Key Issue for Older Voters

Pubished in the Pawtucket Times on November 2, 2020

With Tuesday’s presidential election, hopefully most voters will have reviewed the policy and political positions of President Donald J. Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden.  Throughout the months of this heated political campaign, especially during the two debates and at the town meetings each candidate held on the same evening, their positions diverged sharply on major issues, specifically the economy, immigration, foreign policy, global warming, abortion and COVID-19. In the final stretch of the presidential campaign, winning the war against COVID-19 has quickly become the top issue of voters. 

Over the months, Trump, 74, has barnstormed throughout the country, especially in battleground states, hoping to capture enough electoral votes to win a second term on Nov. 3.  While states reduce the size of gatherings to reduce the spread of COVID-19, throughout the campaign Trump’s rallies have continued to bring thousands of supporters together, with many flaunting local and state coronavirus-related crowd restrictions by not wearing masks or social distancing.  

However, Biden, 77, is always seen wearing a mask, urging his supporters at online and drive-in events to support his candidacy.  At those events, the former vice president called Trump rallies “super-spreader events,” and he stressed the importance of following the advice of public health and medical experts as to preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Differing Views on COVID-19

The 2020 presidential campaign has been overshadowed by the COVID 19 pandemic, with 9 million confirmed cases, 227,000 Americans dying from the coronavirus and an economic downturn forcing more than 31 million people to file for unemployment. During his rallies, Trump claimed “the nation has turned the corner,” calling for the country to “return to normalcy” even as COVID 19 hot spots were popping up across the nation.  Trump also promised the development of a vaccine and distribution after the election and treatment regimens.  Lately, he has suggested that physicians and hospitals are just inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths for profit, drawing the ire of the American Medical Association.

At an Oct. 18 Nevada rally, Trump charged that if Biden is elected there will be more coronavirus pandemic lockdowns because “he’ll listen to the scientists.” The president charged that will result “in a massive depression.”

In stark contrast, Biden countered Trump’s call for normalcy and his rosy assessment of a COVID-19 vaccine release by stating, “We’re about to go into a dark winter…He [has no clear plan, and there’s no prospect that a vaccine is going to be available for the majority of the American people before the middle of next year.”

 Oftentimes, Trump’s messaging of the importance of wearing a mask has not been clear, often times contradicting the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention and the White House COVID-19 Task Force.  “I was okay with the masks.  I was good with it, but I’ve heard very different stories on masks,” he said during his town hall on NBC on Oct. 15.   The president opposes a mandate requiring the wearing of masks and favors leaving this decision to state governors and local leaders.

Turning a Deaf Ear to Public Health Experts

As COVID-19 spreads like wildfire across the nation, Trump and many of his supporters at his large campaign gatherings and even some GOP lawmakers continue to not wear masks or practice social distancing to stop the spread of the disease, their actions ignoring the warnings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House COVID-19 Task Force.

According to an Oct. 12 CNN tweet, “Dr. Fauci says Pres. Trump resuming in-person rallies is “asking for trouble” and “now is… a worse time to do that because when you look at what’s going on in the United States it’s really very troublesome. A number of states, right now, are having increase in test positivity.”

During an interview with CNBC on Oct. 28, Reuters reported, that Dr. Fauci stated, “We are in a very different trajectory.  We’re going in the wrong direction,” noting the COVID-19 cases are increasing in 47 states and hospitals are being overwhelmed by these patients.”

“If things do not change,” Dr. Fauci warned, “If they continue on the course we’re on, there’s gonna be a whole lot of pain in this country with regard to additional cases and hospitalizations and deaths.”

Now researchers are beginning to shed light on Trump’s large rally gatherings and the spread of the COVID-19 among the supporters who attended the events.

Zach Nayer, a resident at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News, and a colleague reviewed the number of new COVID-19 cases for the 14 days before and after each Trump rally from late June to a Sept. 25 Newport News event, and published their findings on Oct. 16 on the health news site STAT.

According to the researchers, the spikes in COVID-19 cases occurred in seven of the 14 cities and townships where rallies were held: Tulsa, Oklahoma; Phoenix; Old Forge, Pa.; Bemidji and Mankato in Minnesota; and Oshkosh and Weston, Wis.

Meanwhile on Oct. 30, Stanford researchers, studying 18 Trump rallies (between June 20 and Sept. 22) concluded that those large events resulted in more than 30,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and likely caused more than 700 deaths among attendees and their close contacts.

No End in Sight

Don’t expect the COVID-19 pandemic to end soon as the number of those infected and deaths continue to spiral out of control.  

According to the COVID Tracking Project, COVID-19 cases increased by 97,080 on Oct. 31, by far the largest one-day jump since the beginning of the pandemic last March, with Midwestern states leading a wave of infections, hospitalizations and deaths across the nation just before the Tuesday’s presidential election.  Experts say that those statistics refutes Trumps charges that the number of COVID 19 cases is growing due to increased testing. 

America’s oldest seniors have lived through the 1918 flu pandemic, the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression and World War II. Now they, along with aging Baby Boomers, face the risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.  Among adults, the risk for severe illness from COVID-19 increases with age. According to AARP, 95 percent of the people across the nation that have died of COVID-19 were 50 and older even though most of the coronavirus cases have been reported in younger than 50.

Before older voters cast their ballots they must consider which presidential candidate’s leadership style can marshal the nation’s resources and devise the best strategy to combat COVID-19 and stop its spread. 

Do we reopen the nation, opening schools and businesses or do we consider lockdowns if recommended by the nation’s public health and medical experts?  Do we consider a “national mask mandate” or do we just leave it up to state governors to decide whether to implement an order requiring people to wear them in public? 

Your vote matters. For you older voters, it just might save your life.

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Winning the Votes of Older Women

Published in Pawtucket Times on October 10, 2016

On Oct. 7, Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthol’s story broke detailing a three minute video of GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump wearing a hot microphone during a 2005 bus ride with former-host Bill Bush, of “Access Hollywood” to the set of “Days of Our Lives” where the real estate mogul had a walk on cameo on the soap opera. The video captured Trump saying “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything …Grab them by the p—y. You can do anything” and crudely describing his failed attempts to seduce a woman while being recently married.

Reaction came swiftly to Trump’s locker room banter with Bush. “No woman should never be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever,” said Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who was doing damage control to keep woman voters from voting Democrat. The leaked video has also resulted in a number of Republican Senate and House candidates running in November to withdrawal their endorsements of Trump.

This is horrific,” Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton said on Twitter, noting a link to the Washington Post article. “We cannot allow this man to become president.”

The embattled Trump initially issued a statement and later a video to try to defuse the controversy and get his flailing campaign back on track 30 days before the November presidential election.

Many political pundits believe that Trump’s off-the-cuff comments that are derogatory to woman, a powerful voting block who decide elections, might just block his chances of becoming the next occupant of the White House.

Women’s Campaign Issues

One day before the politically damaging Washington Post article appeared detailing Trump’s lewd comments in a leaked video, AARP, the nation’s largest aging advocacy group, released survey findings highlighting issues of importance to women voters ages 50 to 69 in key battleground states.

“Older women voters – particularly women of the Boomer generation — could help decide the 2016 presidential election,” said AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond. “Yet many of their real concerns are being ignored and their questions overlooked in a largely issueless campaign. The candidates still have an opportunity to talk to these women about the issues that matter to them.”

The 27 page report, Women Voters Ages 50 +: Economic Anxieties, Social Security, and the 2016 Election, says that heading into this year’s presidential election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has a whopping 15 point lead (48 percent) over the GOP’s standard bearer Donald Trump (33 percent) among woman over age 50. The findings also indicate that older woman favor Democrats running for Congress by a narrower margin (47 percent are inclined to vote for a Democrat while 36 percent inclined to vote for a Republican).

AARP’s survey results noted that majority of woman age 50 and over believe that Clinton will do a better job than Trump in addressing family caregiving (Clinton, 57 percent; Trump, 27 percent), education (56 percent; 31 percent), environment (55 percent; 29 percent) and health (53 percent; 35 percent). The Democratic presidential candidate is also perceived by older woman as having a slight advantage over Trump in controlling government spending and controlling the budget deficit (44 percent; 43 percent).

“It’s the Economy Stupid”
Plus Retirement Issues

As to the economy, the majority of the older woman respondents across these 15 battle ground states worry about pocketbook issues such as prices rising faster than their income (61 percent) and having to pay too much in taxes (54 percent. Four in ten (41%) worry about having prescription drug expenses they cannot afford. Women with lower household incomes are especially likely to worry about these pocketbook issues.

Also, the AARP survey found that many women also worry about retirement security, including their ability to care for themselves as they age (45 percent), not having financial security in retirement (41 percent), and whether Social Security will be there when they retire (38 percent). These retirement-related issues are of particular concern to women with lower household incomes.

Additionally, most women (53 percent) say that the nearly 25 percent cut in Social Security benefits that would result from not addressing the solvency of Social Security would impact them, including 32 percent who say it would impact them “a lot.”

Fixing Social Security is a key issue to older woman voters. The AARP survey noted that the vast majority of women voters ages 50+ (72 percent) say that the next president and Congress should address Social Security immediately.

Most women (67 percent) also favor giving a caregiver credit in calculating Social Security benefits to people who take time off from work to care for loved ones, says the report.

Social Security is flying under the radar screen of the voter. The survey findings noted that few women say that they have heard about the candidates’ plans for Social Security. About one in three (34 percent) say they have seen or heard anything from Clinton, and even fewer (20 percent) say that they have seen or heard anything from Trump.

The AARP survey found that over 54 percent of the respondents are currently, or have been, a family caregiver providing unpaid care to an adult loved one. More than eight in ten (85 percent) women voter’s ages 50+ think it is important for the presidential candidates to talk about how they would support family caregivers who provide unpaid care to aging parents or spouses or other adult family members.

Finally, four in ten (41 percent) women are not confident that they will be able to cover the cost of care for an aging or elderly parent, spouse, or other family member.

Women: A Powerful Voting Block

According to the Center for American Women in Politics, “In recent elections voter turnout rates for women have equaled or exceeded voter turnout rates for men. Women, who constitute more than half of the population, have cast between four to seven million more votes than men in recent elections.“

Only weeks will tell if embattled Trump can overcome the political backlash generated from his locker room banter degrading woman, political insiders predicting that the gender vote gap might just historically widen.

AARP’s survey findings provide sound advice to Clinton and Trump and congressional candidates who are scrambling for last minute votes, especially from married women, younger millennials and women living in the nation’s suburbs. The women’s voting block might just surely tilt the election to a candidate in many legislative districts.