A new study led by Nekehia Quashie, assistant professor of public health at the University of Rhode Island, examines how different African American age groups feel about the responsibility of supporting older adults.
For their study, Dr. Quashie and her co-authors from the University of Michigan, the University of Rhode Island, and the University of Texas Medical Branch examined data from the National Survey of American Life Adult Reinterview regarding 1,696 African American adults between the ages of 18 and 90. The authors compared whether African American young adults (ages 18 to 39), midlife adults (40 to 64), and older adults (65 and older) felt that taking care of older adults’ finances, household chores, and personal care should be the responsibility of family members, a combination of family members and the government, or mainly the responsibility of the government.
“Understanding age differences in African Americans’ views of whether the family and/or government should be responsible for different types of support to older adults provides valuable information on how support services may be targeted for different age groups,” said Dr. Quashie.
More than half (56.9 percent) of young African Americans said financial support for older adults should come from a combination of familial and governmental support, compared to less than half of midlife African Americans (47.1 percent) and older African Americans (35.6 percent). In contrast, much larger shares of midlife and older African Americans (33.7 percent and 38.2 percent) endorsed mainly government responsibility for older adults’ finances, compared to only 22.7 percent of young African Americans.
For household chores, the majority of all respondents supported mainly family responsibility (65.5 percent). However, young adults had the highest support for mainly familial responsibility, midlife adults were the most likely to support equal responsibility, and older adults were more likely to endorse mainly government support.
While most African Americans in the study endorsed equal responsibility for older adults’ personal caregiving, young adults were the most likely to support equal responsibility in this area (45.2 percent). Midlife African Americans were split in their support for mainly family responsibility or equal responsibility (43.6 percent and 43.8 percent). Older African Americans were the most likely group to endorse mainly government responsibility (19.0 percent).
“Attitudes toward financial assistance have the greatest variation among age groups, suggesting that differences in lifecourse exposures linked to resources and social norms influence preferences for family and/or government to be primarily responsible for financially supporting older adults,” the authors conclude. “Older adults are most likely to endorse only government assistance with household tasks and personal care, suggesting an area of potential program development and expanded outreach of services to African Americans. Taken together, our results show that disaggregation by type of task and age is important for understanding social attitudes toward support among African American older adults.”
Dr. Quashie is a sociologist whose work addresses the areas of population aging, family, health, and well-being within a comparative international perspective. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Florida Memorial University and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Utah.
