Cooking, cleaning, bathing, dressing, administering medication—caregivers take on all these tasks and more. Informal or family caregivers are unpaid individuals who assist others with these activities of daily life. 

In 2019, AARP conducted a report entitled Valuing the Invaluable in order to shed light on the contributions and needs of such family caregivers in the United States. Author of the report and AARP Public Policy Institute Director Susan Reinhard states that family caregivers are sometimes thought of as an “invisible army” due to the immense amount of work they put forth to help loved ones with daily activities. According to the report, in 2017, approximately 41 million family caregivers provided 34 billion hours of unpaid care to adult loved ones. The estimated economic value of their unpaid contributions was $470 billion. In that same year, the value of Walmart, the world’s biggest revenue-generating company, was $514 billion. Family caregivers are putting in hours upon hours of work out of love, but with the complexity of care increasing and 90% of seniors opting to age at home, the demands of the family caregiving model are becoming unsustainable. These friends, family members, and spouses of elderly adults can’t do it all alone.

That’s where Clearday comes in. We provide transformative new care models to support both the adults who want to age in place, as well as the family caregivers who have lives of their own to lead. Learn more about our mission here.

By Clearday Research Team

This blog and related materials prepared by Clearday, Inc. may use publicly available information including market research, studies or reports by unaffiliated third parties that include market demographics and other relevant market or research information. Such information or a link to such information is available upon request. We do not warrant any such information and do not have information that causes us to believe that any such market research, studies or reports are not correct in all material respects.