The circle of life

In Turnabout, Children Care For Sick Elders:

Partly paralyzed, with diabetes and colitis, Linda Lent needs extensive care at home.

But with her husband working long hours at a bowling alley, Ms. Lent, 47, relies on a caregiver who travels by school bus toting a homework-filled backpack: her 13-year-old daughter, Annmarie.

Younger people caring for the aged or ill is nothing new, it's the way it's always been. Widespread outsourcing the care of the elderly and the very young to "professionals" is an innovation of the market economy. But there are other issues that the modern world imposes

1) Health care has improved so that many will live on in a state of moderate to extreme morbidity deep into their 70s & 80s.

2) The average number of children that individuals are having is decreasing, and larger numbers are choosing "child-free" lifestyles.

3) People are putting off having their children because of the needs of establishing career & financial security in their 20s. Therefore, a significant number of individuals who become ill "early" (e.g., 40s to 60s) will have offspring who are barely adult themselves.

The correlation in the GSS between the number of children & age at first child is -0.27, modest, but not trivial. This means that those with smaller families tend to have them later than those with larger families. Those who become ill early in life who have fewer children also will have younger ones. We really need robots....