More than two million pensioners caring for a relative, charity warns
Half of me thinks this story demonstrates how resilient we are as a society the other half thinks the story demonstrates the complete opposite! Due to our skewed demography a high proportion of these older carers will live in rural England. It tells us:
The number of over-65s acting as a carer for a relative has topped two million for the first time, Age UK has warned.
The charity said that 2.29m people of retirement age in England provided care in the year 2015/16 – 16 per cent higher than the 1.83m who did the same five years earlier.
The figure suggests that more than one in five over-65s acted as a carer at some point during the year, and they provided 54m hours of unpaid care in England in 2016.
More than 400,000 of them were over 80, and this oldest age group provided 12.7m hours of care per week during the year, the research found.