Millions
of families are struggling to provide care for their loved ones—for
elderly parents and grandparents, and for family members with
disabilities or with serious or chronic illnesses. And nearly half of
all Americans in their 40s and 50s are part of the “sandwich
generation”—with an aging parent and either raising a young child or
financially supporting a grown child. Hillary Clinton knows that as baby
boomers age, more and more families will need to provide care for or
will need care from loved ones. In fact, the number of Americans needing
long-term care and support is projected to grow from about 12 million
today to 27 million by 2050, and nearly 7 in 10 people turning age 65
will need long-term care at some point in life. That is why today
Clinton is putting forward her plans to provide support for the millions
of families paying for, coordinating, or providing care for aging or
disabled family members.
Many family members, most often spouses
and adult daughters, spend time out of the workforce, cut back on hours,
or use personal days, vacation, and family time to provide needed care.
Providing informal caregiving can strain family finances, with
caregivers suffering lost wages, health insurance, and Social Security
benefits. Informal caregiving has a real effect on our economy, as well;
in 2013 alone, the full economic value of unpaid informal caregiving
was estimated at $470 billion. Families also rely on home care workers
to help them provide needed care to aging, disabled, or ill family
members. Home care workers do hard, essential, compassionate work for
millions of Americans. Despite the extraordinary care they provide, home
care workers are often invisible and among the lowest paid of any
occupation, and nearly half live in households that depend on public
assistance. The low wages in these jobs lead to high turnover and
limited training, creating care systems that do not work for the
families depending on care or the workers who provide it.
Hillary
Clinton believes that it is time to reform our tax policies, Social
Security system, and work-family policies, to support paid and unpaid
caregivers and to recognize their fundamental contributions to families
and to America.
As president, Clinton will:
- Clinton will provide tax relief to family members who care for ailing parents and grandparents. Family
caregivers spend as much as $5,000 or more in expenses related to their
elders’ care, but in many cases they receive no tax deduction or
credit. This shouldn’t be this way: caregiving can be a win-win for our
families and our overall health system. This is why Clinton will offer a
20 percent tax credit to help family members offset up to $6,000 in
caregiving costs for their elderly family members, allowing caregivers
to claim up to $1,200 in tax relief each year.
- Launch a Care Workers Initiative
to create a coordinated, government-wide initiative to address the
challenges faced by care workers—by developing strategies to improve
opportunities for care workers to earn the skills they need; creating
paths to professionalize the workforce through career ladders and
apprenticeships; improving the rate-setting processes in the child care
and health care systems to ensure fair wages; providing care workers
with an opportunity to come together and make their voices heard in
support of a stronger system; and by developing and enhancing matching
services to connect care workers to the families who need them.
- Expand Social Security by counting the hard work of caregivers and giving them the benefits they deserve.
Millions of women—and men—take time out of the paid workforce to raise a
child, take care of an aging parent or look after an ailing family
member. Caregiving is hard work that benefits our entire economy.
However, when Americans take time off to take care of a relative, they
do not earn credits toward Social Security retirement benefits. This can
reduce their Social Security benefits at retirement, since those
benefits are calculated based on their top thirty-five years of
earnings—an issue that disproportionately impacts women. For years,
leaders like Congresswoman Nita Lowey have called out these disparities.
No one should face meager Social Security checks because they took on
the vital role of caregiver for part of their career. Hillary Clinton
believes this is an idea whose time has come: Americans should receive
credit toward their Social Security benefits when they are out of the
paid workforce because they are acting as caregivers.
- Build on the Caregiver Respite program.
Caring for a sick family member day in and day out can exact a
significant emotional and physical toll. Both caregiving family members,
and those they care for, can benefit from occasional temporary relief.
As a Senator, Clinton was the lead Senate sponsor of the Lifespan
Respite Care Act, which was enacted. It authorizes grants that continue
today to improve respite care access for family caregivers of children
or adults of any age with support needs. As president, Clinton will go
beyond President Obama’s Caregiver Respite budget request—investing $100
million in the initiative over 10 years.
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