Do Americans value care work?
Polls show they get it and they want gov't support for caregiving
Recently I talked about the abysmal pay available for family care workers in several countries. I’ve also written about how family caregiving is seen as “natural” and outside of the monetary system. Carol Wright pointed out that “informal support” means we don’t get paid and posited that the average taxpayer is probably shirking their own family caregiving responsibilities.
Does paying caregivers well below miniumum wage and well below the poverty level reflect the values of American voters?
Theoretically, democratic governments have policies that reflect the desires of the voting public. In reality, the correlation between the desires of the public and the policies of the state aren’t so strong:
“The idea that the state of the world reflects the preferences of the people in it is both a) totally reasonable and b) often wrong. For instance, you might assume that most Americans think it should be illegal to smoke weed for fun, because it’s illegal at the federal level and in most states. In fact, a majority of Americans have supported legalization for 10 years. So why isn’t weed legal across the country? Maybe it’s because Boomers run the government, and older folks are more likely to say weed is bad. Maybe politicians don’t make it a priority because the places that want legalization the most already have it. Maybe people don’t realize how popular it’s become. Whatever the reason, you’d be wrong to look around at the weird hodgepodge of weed laws and assume this is what most people want. In fact, you’d be wrong to look around at the weird hodgepodge of the world itself and assume this is what most people want.”
The data we have shows that Americans are familiar with the struggles of family caregivers and want the government to create and expand programs that provide financial and practical support:
About half of older Americans have some type of experience with long-term care, including as a care provider, as a recipient of care themselves, or by employing someone else to provide care in their family (AP)
12% of US adults are currently providing unpaid care to both a child and an adult (Pew)
23% of Americans have taken leave from work to provide unpaid care and an additional 25% anticipate needing to do so in the future (Pew)
Those with experience providing care and those with any experience with long-term care are no more likely than those without such experience to support paid family leave programs (AP)
1 in 5 Americans receives Medicare benefits (USA Facts)
A majority of US adults say the government has the responsibility to provide health care coverage for all (Pew - 63% & Gallop - 57%)
Over half of older adults believe that Medicare (56%) and health insurance companies (52%) should pay for long-term care (AP)
70% of older Americans support a government-administered long-term care insurance program, similar to Medicare (AP)
78% of Americans age 40 and older support a benefit that provides temporary respite care through Medicare (AP)
74% of Americans age 40 and older support changing Social Security rules to give earnings credits to caregivers who leave the workforce to care for a family member (AP)
More than 8 in 10 Americans age 40 and older support tax breaks for people who provide care to a family member (AP)
79% of Americans support increasing SSI payments to the poverty level, with 74% supporting increasing asset limits from $2k to $10k and 64% supporting an elimination of asset limits (Data for Progress)
65% of Americans say the government doesn’t do enough to help older people (Pew)
One of the things that’s so tricky is that it’s one thing to say you support an issue, it’s another to turn that value into a specific policy. A poll can show that “a majority of older adults say they would like the federal government to devote a lot or a great deal of effort this year to helping people with the costs of ongoing living assistance.” What does that really mean, though?
My takeaway is that these polls show that we don’t need to focus on awareness campaigns. People have enough awareness of the struggles of the disabled and of caregivers that they want to see caregivers supported. We don’t need to keep convincing them. It’s time to get behind people proposing real policy changes and turn that overwhelming support into action.
Who’s putting forward proposals for policy changes that support family caregivers? Some of the US organizations that come immediately to mind for me are:
Who am I not thinking of? What politicians have proposals that support family caregivers? What activists are doing work your admire?
Lyz Lenz on midwestern stoicism.
Leah Libresco Sargeant on euthanasia and the fear of being a burden.
Heather Havrilesky discusses the everyday compassion fatigue that happens within marriage:
“Compassion fatigue is a byproduct of keeping your costume on for too long... If you allowed yourself a little time and space to feel your own feelings, you wouldn’t be so harsh about his.”
On how our past experiences shift our perception of the present:
“Over the sweep of time, our lived experience thus rewires the brain, generating a forceful momentum of emotional habit. What we have felt comes to shape what we most easily and readily feel, unstringing the harp of reality. We come to perceive the world not as it is but as we are. At the heart of this reality-discord are what Lewis, Amini, and Lannon term Limbic Attractors — pre-conditioned patterns of interpretation of incoming sensory data, densely networked and deeply ingrained in the limbic brain, activated so reflexively and powerfully that they can obscure and overwhelm the raw signal of reality.”
April 4th was National Caregivers Day in Canada and Donna Thomson shared her reasons for hope.
If you qualify for Canada's Disability Tax Credit, there are other credits you might be entitled to.
The Disability Benefits Compass used to be for BC residents, now it's for all Canadians.
This April is Care Workers Recognition Month in the US.
A lovely post from the School of Life on the meaning of the Easter story:
“What is the mark of a good life? Who should be considered a success? Easter offers a surprising and helpful answer: success is not about obvious worldly triumph, it’s about developing an ability to use one’s own suffering as a route to compassion for others.”
Justice in Aging: https://justiceinaging.org/
Right now they're working to remove the rule that says SSI recipients who receive in-kind support have their SSI payments reduced to account for that. So, if you buy a friend groceries or give them clothes or let them stay in your spare room, whatever pittance they get is reduced by the value of whatever you've provided. They have a petition going here: https://justiceinaging.salsalabs.org/omittingfoodfrominkindsupportandmaintenancecalculations/index.html