Today, there are seven potential caregivers for every person needing care in the United States. But we’re heading toward a caregiving cliff—by 2030, that ratio will have dropped to four caregivers for each care receiver.
Many reasons: an aging Boomer population, longer lifespans, changing family formations (including an increase in single, childless seniors), more women in the workplace, a higher number of people with disabilities, and fewer nursing homes and assisted living facilities. They add up to the stark fact that the 44 million caregivers in the United States won’t be able to rely on the traditional 20th Century solution—family support—to care for the millions in need over the next 20 years. We’ve recognized the looming crisis, but proposals for change have been limited to incremental steps that address present day problems instead of the ones we are about to encounter.
Throughout our lives, we will face events and circumstances that require a great deal of time and money, such as education, childcare, retirement, serious illness—and long term care. It’s urgently important that we include a sustainable and effective care layer in our future planning to inform the choices and investments we make as individuals, families, communities, and as a country.
A 21st Century Care Layer must be embedded in all policies and home technologies, pervasive in all housing and urban designs, and directly accessible to all who give and receive care. Only by deliberately and systematically building a care layer that reflects 21st Century social and cultural norms, leverages promising advances in automation, coordinates technologies and robotics, and includes local and federal policy and workforce interventions that are useful to the economic realities of today’s workers will we avert the pending caregiving crisis and prepare ourselves for the future.
Join the Institute for the Future as we ignite the social R&D of 21st Century caregiving and rewrite the future for caring in this country.
To begin this exploration, IFTF developed a set of three video scenarios for caregiving in the year 2031 that portray different paths away from crisis. The scenarios focus primarily on care provided by family members for older adults, who represent the majority of care recipients:
No single intervention will “solve” the problem of caregiving—in fact, there is no single problem. Every instance of caregiving is a unique and complex blend of different needs. But some combination of the strategies described in our scenarios may help alleviate the burden on caregivers and improve the quality of caregiving.
These three scenarios are intended to provoke serious consideration of strategies—including those portrayed in the scenarios and others—that will guide actions that can be taken now to avert this crisis.
With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, IFTF created three scenarios that explore caregiving in the year 2031 and are intended to provoke a wider discussion about current alternatives to improve support for caregivers.
The project, which focused primarily on caregiving for older friends or relatives, began with a literature review and a dozen structured interviews with experts representing a diverse set of experiences and perspectives on caregiving. The literature review and interviews were combined with IFTF’s existing research to develop forecasts that describe how the key drivers of change over the next 10-15 years are likely to impact the caregiving experience. The forecasts informed the three video scenarios, each focused on a different strategy for improving the future of caregiving. In June 2016, the project culminated with a workshop of 20 experts at IFTF in Palo Alto, California, using the scenarios to provoke conversations and a draft of this toolkit to drive actions to improve future experiences for caregivers and care recipients.
Caregiving 2031 Toolkit
The accompanying Caregiving 2031 Scenario Toolkit is your guide to exploring the complex issues of caregiving and identifying promising options to address these challenges, using the three future scenarios as a starting point.
IFTF Caregiving 2031 Workshop Report
Engage with IFTF foresight researchers and powerful portfolio of tools and techniques to embrace strategic foresight, navigate large-scale change, and lead your organization toward a vibrant future.
