What Happens to Caregivers as They Age

What Happens to Caregivers as They Age?

Caregiving is often understood as work that supports others through aging. Much less attention is paid to what happens to caregivers themselves over time.

Yet this question sits at the center of how care systems function.

Across many contexts, caregiving is not a short-term activity. It is sustained labor, often physically demanding, emotionally intensive, and carried out over years or decades. For many, it is also work that is underpaid, informal, or excluded from long-term protections. As a result, caregiving does not simply shape the well-being of those receiving care; it also shapes the life trajectories of those providing it (ILO 2018; Stone 2016).

This raises a broader question: after years of caring for others, how, and under what conditions, do caregivers themselves grow old?

Caregiving as Work That Accumulates Over Time

Caregiving is frequently treated as episodic or supplementary. In practice, it is cumulative.

Over time, caregiving can influence:

• financial stability and access to retirement savings

• physical and mental health outcomes

• the ability to remain in stable employment

• access to benefits such as healthcare and social protection

These effects do not occur in isolation. They build across the life course, often in ways that are not immediately visible but become more pronounced with age.

Research shows that caregivers are more likely to experience economic insecurity, reduced labor force participation, and adverse health outcomes over time (Schulz and Eden 2016; Reinhard et al. 2019). Time spent providing care may come at the expense of contributions to retirement systems or opportunities for upward mobility, creating long-term consequences for financial security (OECD 2021).

The Role of Structural Gaps

Understanding caregiver aging requires looking beyond individual experiences to the systems that shape them.

Caregiving exists at the intersection of two domains:

• workforce systems (how care work is organized, valued, and compensated)

• aging systems (how societies provide retirement security, healthcare, and social support)

These systems are not always aligned.

Care work may be essential to the functioning of aging societies, yet it is often excluded from the very protections that aging systems are designed to provide. Globally, a significant share of care work remains informal or undervalued, limiting access to social protection and labor rights (ILO 2018; Razavi 2007).

This misalignment creates structural gaps i.e, points at which contributions made through caregiving are not translated into long-term security.

Migrant Caregivers and Uneven Trajectories

These dynamics are particularly pronounced for migrant caregivers.

Migrant workers play a central role in care systems across many countries, especially in long-term care and domestic work sectors. At the same time, their access to benefits, protections, and long-term security is often shaped by immigration status, labor conditions, and transnational obligations (Parrenas 2015; Yeates 2009).

For migrant caregivers, questions of aging are not only about resources, but also about place:

• Where will they grow old?

• In which system will they be recognized?

• What happens when care work is performed in one country, but aging unfolds in another?

These questions highlight how caregiving is embedded in broader global and institutional arrangements.

Reframing the Question

Much of the existing discussion on caregiving focuses on how to support care recipients or how to expand care provision. While these are important, they leave a critical dimension underexamined.

Caregiving is not only about delivering care. It is also about the long-term trajectories of those who provide it.

Reframing the issue in this way shifts attention toward:

• how caregiving work is valued over time

• how systems recognize (or fail to recognize) that work

• and what it means to ensure that caregivers themselves can age with security and dignity

Toward More Equitable Aging Futures

Addressing caregiver aging does not require entirely new systems, but it does require better alignment between existing ones.

This includes:

• recognizing caregiving as long-term labor with lasting consequences

• expanding access to benefits and protections across different types of care work

• addressing the specific vulnerabilities faced by migrant caregivers

• and designing policies that account for cumulative life-course effects

At its core, this is a question of equity.

If care systems depend on the sustained labor of caregivers, then those systems must also account for the futures of those who provide that care.

A Central Question

Caregiving sustains aging societies. But it also shapes who is able to age securely within them.

Understanding this tension is essential for thinking about the future of care.

After decades of caring for others, where, and how, do caregivers themselves grow old?

References

International Labour Organization (ILO). 2018. Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work. Geneva: ILO.

OECD. 2021. Caregiving in Crisis: Gender Inequality in Paid and Unpaid Work during COVID-19. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2015. Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work. Stanford University Press.

Razavi, Shahra. 2007. The Political and Social Economy of Care in a Development Context. UNRISD.

Reinhard, Susan C., et al. 2019. Valuing the Invaluable: 2019 Update. AARP Public Policy Institute.

Schulz, Richard, and Jill Eden, eds. 2016. Families Caring for an Aging America. National Academies Press.

Stone, Robyn I. 2016. “The Direct Care Worker: The Third Rail of Home Care Policy.” Annual Review of Public Health.

Yeates, Nicola. 2009. Globalizing Care Economies and Migrant Workers. Palgrave Macmillan.