How Caregiving Affects Earnings, Retirement, and Social Security

Family caregivers remain the foundation of care for people with disabilities and complex medical conditions in the United States. While caregiving duties consume time and can take physical and emotional tolls, the responsibilities also come with a high financial cost to the 35 million working family caregivers. These caregivers forgo lifetime earnings, retirement income from employment-based plans, and Social Security benefits when their caregiving responsibilities force them to reduce their work hours or give up paid work altogether.

Using Urban Institute's Dynamic Simulation of Income Model (DYNASIM4), this report estimates the lifetime income losses that working caregivers face, based on earnings, employment-based retirement income, and Social Security income for the cohort of US caregivers born between 1981 and 1985. Read the full report.

Key Takeaways:

• On average, working caregivers born between 1981 and 1985 lose $120,500 in lifetime income due to time spent providing care.
• Most of those average losses come from reduced lifetime earnings ($105,100), but working caregivers also lose future retirement income ($7,300) and Social Security income ($8,100), extending the financial consequences into retirement.
• Nationwide, working caregivers lose an estimated $2.3 trillion in lifetime economic losses.
• Almost all working caregivers lose work hours because of caregiving, putting them at risk of financial loss. Only 3.4 percent of working caregivers lost no work hours.