Study Reports on Ethnic and Gender Characteristics of the Care Workforce
Not a surprise: mostly female and disproportionately minority and immigrant
It probably comes as no surprise that a disproportionate share of caregivers, both paid and unpaid, are immigrants and people of color. They are also much more likely to be women than men.
In terms of paid caregivers, this reflects their relative strength in the marketplace for employment since work as home health aides or personal care attendants in nursing homes and other care facilities is generally underpaid and not desirable.
A study issued by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in 2018, The Shifting Supply and Demand of Care Work: The Growing Role of People of Color and Immigrants, quantifies some of this. (It includes data on child care workers as well as those who care for seniors and younger adults with disabilities.) Here are some of its findings:
In 2015, 88% of care workers were women; yet over the decade beginning in 2005, the number of male care workers grew at a higher rate.
In 2015, 14% of home care workers were naturalized citizens and 12.5% were non-citizens; their numbers were somewhat less among workers in care facilities, 12.5% and 8%, respectively.
During the decade from 2005 to 2015, the share of naturalized citizens and foreign-born non-citizens in the care workforce grew by 70% and 20%, respectively.
Much of this was in the area of home care, where their numbers grew, respectively, 140% and 80%, no doubt reflecting the growth of home care in general, which grew by 79% over the decade.
Overall, their share of the adult care workforce grew from 19% in 2005 to 23% in 2015.
In 2015, 46% of home care workers were white, 28% Black, 19% Hispanic, and 7.5% listed as other or mixed race. (For purposes of perspective, their proportions in the overall U.S. population in 2015 were 62% white, 12% Black, 18% Hispanic, and 9.3% Asian, mixed or other.)
The ethnic identity of workers in adult care centers were 52% white, 31% Black, 10% Hispanic, and 7% other or mixed race.
Poverty rates among care workers were high, with more than half of women and nearly half of men providing home care experiencing poverty or near poverty, which is identified as 200% of the federal poverty rate.
Workers in adult care centers fared somewhat better with a bigger difference for men and women. Somewhat less than half of female workers as compared with about a third of male workers in such setting experienced poverty or near poverty in 2015.
The average compensation of both men and women providing adult care in both home and facility settings failed to keep up with inflation between 2005 and 2015.
The authors of the report reflect on several features of the baby boomer generation that are likely to increase the need for home care workers at a greater rate than the growing number of aging baby boomers would indicate by itself. Baby boomers tend to prefer to stay in their homes as they age; they married less and divorced more than prior generations, meaning that they are less likely to have partners who can provide care; and they had fewer children than prior generations, resulting in fewer adult children to provide and coordinate care.
Further research: It will be interesting to see how all these numbers have changed over the past decade, especially given the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and more recent changes in immigration policy.