Family caregivers are likely to have fewer assets and more problems with debt than non-caregivers, despite having similar levels of knowledge and preparation for retirement, according to a new report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s 33rd annual Retirement Confidence Survey.

One fourth of the unpaid caregivers surveyed said they have less than $1,000 in savings and investments compared with 15% of non-caregivers. 

The 2023 survey of 2,537 Americans was conducted online Jan. 5 through Feb. 2. All respondents were aged 25 or more years. The survey included 1,320 working adults and 1,217 retirees.

“Caregivers can take on many roles and responsibilities when taking on the care of a relative or friend,” Craig Copeland, director of wealth benefits research at EBRI, said in a press release. “Unfortunately, what we found is that caregiver retirees are more likely than non-caregivers to say that their overall lifestyle in retirement is worse than they expected it to be before they retired.”

Fifty-five percent of workers who also are family caregivers, as well as 37% of caregiving retirees, reported that they provide financial support to their caregiving recipients. More than one-third (35%) of family caregivers who are workers and 37% of family caregivers who had retired from paid work said they had provided $5,000 to $14,999 in financial support to a caregiving recipient in the past 12 months.

Data show that family caregivers tend to be more concerned with financial and economic “what-ifs” than are non-caregivers. According to the EBRI, concerns include the US economy dipping into recession within the next year, inflation staying high for at least the next 12 months, salary and any other work compensation not keeping up with inflation, and the increasing cost of living making it more difficult for them to save as much money as they would like.

“The distributions of the ages at which both caregivers and non-caregivers retired are not different. In addition, the likelihoods of retirees having retired earlier, later, or when planned, are also not different between caregivers and non-caregivers,” EBRI said. “However, the top reason caregivers were most likely to have retired earlier than planned was because they had to care for a spouse or another family member, whereas non-caregivers’ top reason is that they could afford to retire earlier than planned.”