Employment and Caregiving: Exploration of African American Caregivers

To more completely understand the challenges African American families face when combining employment commitments and informal caregiving responsibilities, the authors used data from a community sample of 119 African American elder-caregiver dyads. This article examines the nature of caregiving relationships and extent to which caregivers' employment statuses affect the hours of care provided. The authors concluded that employed caregivers do not provide significantly less care than do unemployed caregivers, elderly people with employed caregivers are no more likely than those with unemployed caregivers to use formal services, and unemployed caregivers may remain unemployed partly because of caregiving responsibilities.