Youth Caregivers of Adults in the United States: Prevalence and the Association Between Caregiving and Education

Abstract

A growing proportion of individuals adopt family caregiving roles. Family caregivers are the primary providers of long-term care in the United States yet limited federal policy supports exist, despite the known negative impacts of caregiving. There is also limited information about the prevalence of youth/young adult caregivers and the impacts of caregiving at formative ages in the United States. Our objective is to estimate the prevalence of youth caregivers and examine the association of caregiving with educational investments. We use the American Time Use Survey (2013-2019) to identify and describe youth caregivers (aged 15-18) and young adult caregivers (aged 19-22) and compare them with non-caregiving peers. We estimate that there are approximately 1,623,000 youth caregivers and 1,986,000 young adult caregivers, corresponding to 9.2% and 12.7% of these age groups, respectively. However, there is a wide range in the estimated prevalence per year, from approximately 364,000 to 2.8 million youth caregivers and from 353,000 to 2.2 million young adult caregivers, depending on caregiver definition. Unlike adult caregivers, we find that young men and women were nearly equally likely to provide care. We also find that non-White individuals are disproportionately represented as youth caregivers. Compared with non-caregiving peers, both youth and young adult caregivers are less likely to be enrolled in school and, among those enrolled in school, spend significantly less time on educational activities. Considering the association of caregiving among youth/young adults and education, policies supporting youth and young adult caregivers are critical.

Keywords: Caregivers; Educational status; Family caregivers; Informal caregivers; Youth.

Fig. 1

Time use of youth and young adult caregivers compared with non-caregiving peers. Caregivers are those providing assistance with ADLs or IADLs to adults, as defined in online Appendix A. Source: Author calculations from the American Time Use Survey.

Fig. 2

Predicted probability of enrollment in school (full-time or part-time) and time spent on educational activities. These outcomes are calculated from logistic regressions after controlling for sex, race, Hispanic ethnicity, marital status, rural residence, household size interacted with family income, number of children in the household, year of survey, weekend day, summer month, and region. Model results also reflect complex survey design. Predicted values for non-caregivers and any caregivers come from Model 1, and predicted values for ADL or IADL caregivers come from Model 2, as noted in the Methods. Source: Author calculations from the American Time Use Survey.