Table of contents
- Key points
- Animated YouTube video
- Introduction
- National comparisons
- Provision of unpaid care across English regions and Wales
- English local authority comparisons - total unpaid care in 2011 and comparison with 2001
- English local authority comparisons - provision of 50 or more hours of unpaid care by local authority and 2001 comparisons
- English local authority comparisons - linkage of unpaid care with general health
- Welsh Unitary Authority comparisons - a comparison of care provision between 2001-2011
- Care provision for small area groupings in England and Wales
- More Census analysis
- Background notes
1. Key points
There were approximately 5.8 million people providing unpaid care in England and Wales in 2011, representing just over one tenth of the population.
The absolute number of unpaid carers has grown by 600,000 since 2001; the largest growth was in the highest unpaid care category, fifty or more hours per week.
Unpaid care has increased at a faster pace than population growth between 2001 and 2011 in England and Wales; the same is true in Wales and across all English regions other than London, where it decreased.
The provision of unpaid care is more than twice as high in Neath Port Talbot (14.6 per cent) than in Wandsworth borough (6.5 per cent), in 2011.
Most authorities experienced increases in unpaid care between 2001 and 2011.
Authorities with higher percentages of their population who are ‘limited a lot’ in daily activities also have higher levels of unpaid care provided.
2. Animated YouTube video
There is a short video about the provision of Unpaid Care in England and Wales which accompanies this release.
Back to table of contents3. Introduction
The provision of unpaid care in England and Wales is becoming increasingly common as the population ages, with an expectation that the demand for care provided by spouses and adult children will more than double over the next thirty years1. The provision of unpaid care is therefore an important social policy issue because it not only makes a vital contribution to the supply of care, but can also affect the employment opportunities and social and leisure activities of those providing it. Carers are a socially and demographically diverse group and as the demand for care is projected to grow, people are increasingly likely to become providers of care at some point in their lives.
The importance of unpaid care was reflected by its inclusion as an item in both the 2001 Census and 2011 Census2. The questions asked were the same in each census, therefore direct comparison over time on the number of unpaid carers and the extent of care they provide is possible at national, regional and local level, and by level of area disadvantage.
Notes for introduction
Informal Care for Older People Provided by Their Adult Children: Projections of Supply and Demand to 2041 in England, Personal Social Services Research Unit.
The 2001 and 2011 Census forms (2.02 Mb Pdf) asked whether you provided unpaid care to family members, friends, neighbours or others because of long-term physical or mental ill health or disability, or problems related to old age and for how many hours per week.
4. National comparisons
The 2011 Census shows there are approximately 5.8 million people providing unpaid care in England and Wales, representing just over one tenth of the population (10.3 per cent); in 2001 it was 10.0 per cent). Of these, around 3.7 million provide 1-19 hours per week, 775,000 provide 20-49 hours and 1.4 million provide 50 hours or more unpaid care.
Figure 1: The breakdown of unpaid care categories for England and Wales
Source: Census - Office for National Statistics
Notes:
- Percentages are rounded values to one decimal place.
Levels of unpaid care were higher in Wales than in England for all categories, so that in Wales more than 12 per cent of the population were providing some level of care in 2011; however, the provision of between 1 to 19 hours of unpaid care was similar in Wales (6.9 per cent) to that in England (6.5 per cent).
Since 2001, there has been an increase of approximately 600,000 people providing unpaid care in England and Wales, 30,000 of whom are in Wales, representing a percentage increase of 3.2 per cent. The growth in unpaid care was highest in the 50 hours or more category, where an additional 271,649 carers were providing this extent of care compared with 2001; in the 1-19 hours category the number of additional carers was 109,250, and in the 20-49 hours category there was an additional 201,542.
If people, on average, are providing towards the mid-range of hours per week in the 1-19 or 20-49 hour categories, and 50 hours in the 50 hours or more category, then this amounts to approximately 3.4 million working weeks of care provided based on a standard 37 hours working week and 17 million working days in a given week in 2011.
Back to table of contents5. Provision of unpaid care across English regions and Wales
Figure 2: Provision of unpaid care across English regions and Wales, 2011
Source: Census - Office for National Statistics
Notes:
- Percentages are rounded values to one decimal place.
Across English regions and Wales, the provision of between 1 and 19 hours was the most common level of care provided. London had the lowest percentage of unpaid carers and Wales the highest. London’s lower level of care provision is likely to be influenced by its younger age structure, the transient nature of its population and differences in household composition.
Wales had a higher percentage of people providing unpaid care overall than any English region at 12.1 per cent, and was highest in the categories 20-49 hours and 50 hours or more.
In England, as with general health and disability, a clear north-south divide exists with the highest percentages of care provision being in the North West, North East, East and West Midlands. The only exception to this being Yorkshire and the Humber having a lower percentage than the South West. The relatively older age structure of the South West population is also likely to influence the underlying need for care compared with other southern regions such as the South East and London.
Figure 3: Percentage change in provision of total unpaid care between 2001 and 2011; English Regions and Wales
English regions and Wales ranked by per cent change in 2001 to 2011
Source: Census - Office for National Statistics
Notes:
- Percentages are rounded values to one decimal place
- Percentage change in unpaid care between 2001 and 2011 is calculated by subtracting per cent providing care in 2001 from per cent providing care in 2011 and dividing the resulting figure by per cent providing care in 2001 and multiplying by 100
- Source: 2001 and 2011 Census - Office for National Statistics
Download this chart Figure 3: Percentage change in provision of total unpaid care between 2001 and 2011; English Regions and Wales
Image .csv .xlsUnpaid care has been growing since 2001 in all regions, with the exception of London and Yorkshire and the Humber. The largest increase occurred in the South West, with an additional 109,602 unpaid carers, and the smallest in the North East, with 9,758 additional carers; however, the absolute number of carers increased in all regions and in Wales.
The increase in the South West may be affected by a growth in the population aged 60-69 and a fall in those aged 30-39 since 2001. Figure 4 shows the change in population structure since 2001 in both the South West and London. Comparisons of age structures between other regions and local authorities can be visualised using the animated population pyramids, selecting the regions or local authorities to compare and clicking the overlay button.
Figure 4: Comparison of the South West region’s population age-structure with that of London's in 2011, with 2001 structure overlaid, by sex
Source: Census - Office for National Statistics
Notes:
- Percentages are rounded values to one decimal place.
10. Care provision for small area groupings in England and Wales
The inequality that exists between populations is often explained in terms of area disadvantage. Measures of health status such as life expectancy and health expectancy are shown to be more favourable in some geographical locations than others and to be strongly patterned with material factors such as income, environment, housing quality, unemployment, access to services and education. These factors can be brought together into an index (such as the English Indices of Deprivation which can be applied to small areas such as lower super output areas (LSOAs) to give a measure of relative material disadvantage experienced by a specific area compared with other areas.
In order to present a picture of unpaid care and the scale of inequality that exists between population groupings, these small areas are amalgamated, on the basis of their relative level of disadvantage. The Index of Multiple Deprivation 2004 and 2010 in England, and the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2005 and 2011 in Wales, are used to group areas into tenths (deciles). Percentages of unpaid care are then calculated for these deciles.
In England there were 32,844 LSOAs with enumerated populations in 2011; use of the ONS Census Geography lookup file enables the total number of census LSOAs to be assigned an Indices of Deprivation 2010 score. LSOAs were then ranked according to their level of deprivation and grouped into tenths (deciles), with each decile consisting of approximately 3,284 LSOAs.
In Wales there were 1,909 LSOAs enumerated in the 2011 Census; the use of the ONS lookup file enables the total number of census LSOAs to be assigned a WIMD 2011 rank so that nine deciles in Wales consisted of 191 areas, and one decile 190 areas.
In England, the difference in the percentage of unpaid care between the most and least deprived areas is modest, with levels of care lower in the more deprived areas at both time points. Between 2001 and 2011, the level of care has remained largely flat among the three most deprived area deciles, but increases have occurred in the least deprived deciles (Figure 9).
Figure 9: Percent providing unpaid care by LSOA IMD deciles, England 2001 and 2011
Source: Census - Office for National Statistics
Notes:
- Index of Multiple Deprivation 2004.
- Index of Multiple Deprivation 2010.
- In descending order of deprivation, i.e decile 1 represents the most deprived ten per cent of Lower Super Output Areas in England and decile 10 represents the least deprived ten per cent of Lower Super Output Areas in England.
- Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.
In Wales percentages of unpaid care for each decile were higher than those in England (Figure 10). As with England, unpaid care was slightly lower in the more deprived deciles in both 2001 and 2011. Only decile 3 experienced a slight fall in unpaid care between 2001 and 2011, with the greatest increases occurring from the middle to the least deprived deciles.
Figure 10: Percent providing unpaid care by LSOA WIMD deciles, Wales 2001, 2011
Source: Census - Office for National Statistics
Notes:
- Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2005.
- Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2011.
- In descending order of deprivation, i.e decile 1 represents the most deprived ten per cent of Lower Super Output Areas in England and decile 10 represents the least deprived ten per cent of Lower Super Output Areas in England.
- Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.
Of interest is the lower level of provision of unpaid care in the more deprived deciles for the last two censuses in both England and Wales. This is surprising given that levels of either ‘Very good’ or ‘Good’ general health are lower in the more deprived deciles and rates of activity limitation are higher. A possible explanation for this could be that people in less deprived areas live longer, and therefore their populations are somewhat older and more at risk of surviving into states of dependency, whereas in the most deprived areas the mortality rate is higher.
Another potential influence is where care is being provided. Those living in less deprived areas could be providing care for people in more deprived areas, where need is likely to be greater, which would counter any relationship with deprivation. These uncertainties can only be untangled using more detailed census data tables following future releases of multivariate statistics.
Further analysis will be needed to support this provisional finding by comparing decile age structures and taking account of any future revisions to the English Indices of Deprivation, 2010 and the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation, 2011 using 2011 Census data.
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