By Lisa Watts
UMass Boston researchers will study whether federal support policies can lessen the financial challenges facing family caregivers of older adults.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has awarded researchers at UMass Boston a grant to study the financial challenges of family caregivers. The project will explore which federal support policies are preferred by family caregivers of older adults and whether those policies have the potential to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in retirement security.
The project was funded through a new five-year partnership between UMass Boston Gerontology and the Boston College Center for Retirement Research (CRR). CRR is one of six national centers in SSA’s Retirement and Disability Research Consortium.
In its most recent round of five-year funding awards to consortium members, SSA emphasized two goals: improving diversity and reaching more underserved populations. In seeking potential grantees, CRR contacted UMass Boston, which has a thriving gerontology program, a highly diverse student population, and strong connections with underserved populations across Massachusetts. Other CCR-affiliated organizations include the Mathematica Center for Studying Disability Policy, Syracuse University, and the Urban Institute.
Marc Cohen, co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston, will lead the research team, which also includes Brandon Wilson, senior director of Community Catalyst’s Center for Community Engagement in Health Innovation; Christian Weller, a professor of public policy at UMass Boston; Anqi Chen, senior research economist and the assistant director of savings research at CRR; and Claire Wickersham, a UMass Boston postdoctoral student.
Cohen’s team will undertake the qualitative side of the project, conducting focus groups with diverse groups of family caregivers to understand their specific financial challenges.
“Family caregiving can be quite challenging and financially burdensome,” Cohen says. “Many of these caregivers have to make accommodations that affect their jobs, from avoiding promotions to high absenteeism to dropping out of the workforce altogether. And, they directly incur some of the extra costs associated with caring for an older relative or friend with disabilities.”
Focus group participants will review proposed federal policies designed to lessen their financial burden, such as tax benefits for family caregivers and assurances that Social Security credits still accrue if caregivers are forced to leave the workforce to care for an older family member.
“We want to hear which of these types of financial support (caregivers) would find most helpful and if there are other approaches that we haven’t talked about,” Cohen says.
CRR researchers will conduct the grant’s quantitative work, analyzing information from the Health and Retirement Study. They will estimate which racial and ethnic demographic groups could benefit most from support policies and to what extent the policies might improve a household’s financial security. Researchers will complete the focus group work by July 2024 and deliver their final report in September 2024.
Through UMass Boston’s new affiliation with CRR, SSA also funded a study on improving Social Security information for Black and Hispanic communities. The project is led by Caitlin Coyle, director of the Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging at UMass Boston, and Jean-Pierre Aubry, associate director of state and local research at CRR.
Read more about UMass Boston’s affiliation with the Center for Retirement Research.