Caring about Caregiving
We don’t accurately value what is important to people. Whether from age, illness, or disability, millions of Americans — 40 million, in fact — take on the responsibility of caring for their loved ones’ changing needs.
Helping a relative through unpaid caregiving doesn’t add to GDP or a bottom line, so business leaders and politicians often overlook its importance.
But aging is inevitable. We watch our parents and older relatives cope with the ills of aging. Sometimes, illness or disability compounds the aging process or makes living an independent life more difficult regardless of age. In that case, parents, siblings, children, or partners may need care. We need caregivers, and we should do more to support them.
Before suburban exodus in America, multigenerational living remained the norm. We can date caregiving in the US back to the first documented Native American tribes who often shared communal living spaces, and many cultures still value the arrangement.
Our society has changed a lot since the first Americans’ hunter-gatherer days. We’ve built industries that require human labor, and we reward that labor with the money needed to provide for basic needs. Caregiving has yet to enjoy such a reward.
The problem with that new system is we’ve started valuing intangible assets and invented social measurements above the true wellbeing of our communities. GDP can’t capture how well we take care of each other, how clean our water and air is, or how many people go hungry.
Lawmakers in several states are trying to support caregivers by passing legislation that would provide nonrefundable state tax credits to caregivers. Congress is following suit with the bipartisan Credit for Caring Act, an effort to provide caretakers with a maximum $3,000 non-refundable tax credit each year.
These are the kinds of ideas we should be debating, but we need more. We need to have conversations and craft policy that reflects what matters most to us. To better care for our loved ones, to better care for ourselves and to care for the planet we need better ways to measure what’s valuable.
It’s time we create policies that reflect our deepest values. It’s time we care about caregiving.
