Sandwich Generation Statistics
The reference numbers on the sandwich generation and family caregiving across Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom: who the carers are, how many hours and dollars the care load represents, what it does to carers' health, and the demographic wave still to come. Every figure links to a named primary source.
Who the sandwich generation are
The sandwich generation are adults caring in two directions at once: raising or supporting children while also caring for ageing parents. The best-measured definition comes from Pew Research Center, which counts adults who have a living parent aged 65 or older and are either raising a child under 18 or providing financial support to an adult child.
- 23% of US adults are part of the sandwich generation: they have a parent aged 65 or older and are either raising a child under 18 or financially supporting an adult child. (Pew Research Center, 2022)
- 54% of Americans in their 40s are sandwiched between an aging parent and their own children, the highest share of any age group (compared with 36% of those in their 50s and 27% of those in their 30s). (Pew Research Center, 2022)
- 29% of US family caregivers are "sandwich generation" caregivers, simultaneously caring for an adult and a child under 18. (NAC/AARP, Caregiving in the US 2025)
- In Australia, the average carer is 50 years old (54 for primary carers), squarely in the child-raising and working years, and two-thirds (67.7%) of primary carers are women. (ABS, Disability, Ageing and Carers 2022)
How many carers: Australia, the US and the UK
No country counts its "sandwich generation" directly, but all three measure unpaid caring, and in all three the numbers are large and growing.
- Australia has 3.0 million unpaid carers, up from 2.6 million in 2018. That is around one in eight Australians (11.9%). About 1.2 million are primary carers, the main provider of care to another person. (ABS, Disability, Ageing and Carers 2022)
- 63 million Americans, one in four adults, are family caregivers providing ongoing care to adults or children with a medical condition or disability. That is an increase of 20 million caregivers since 2015. (NAC/AARP, Caregiving in the US 2025)
- The UK has 5.8 million unpaid carers, on Census 2021 figures. (Carers UK, Key facts and figures) In England and Wales alone, the census counted an estimated 5.0 million unpaid carers, 9.0% of the population aged five and over. (ONS, Unpaid care, England and Wales: Census 2021)
The care load, in hours and dollars
Unpaid family care is a workforce hiding in plain sight. Measured in hours it rivals a national industry; measured in dollars it exceeds the formal care sector's budget in each country.
Hours
- Australian carers provided nearly 2.2 billion hours of unpaid care in 2020. Primary carers average 35.2 hours of care per week, close to a full-time job. (Deloitte Access Economics for Carers Australia, The Value of Informal Care in 2020)
- 30.3% of Australian primary carers spend 40 or more hours a week caring. (ABS, Disability, Ageing and Carers 2022)
- US caregivers now average 27 hours of care per week, and nearly a quarter (24%) provide 40 or more hours weekly. (NAC/AARP, Caregiving in the US 2025)
- 1.7 million people in the UK provide 50 or more hours of care every week. (Carers UK, Key facts and figures)
Dollars
- Replacing Australia's informal care with paid care would have cost $77.9 billion in 2020. (Deloitte Access Economics for Carers Australia, The Value of Informal Care in 2020)
- US family caregivers provided 36 billion hours of unpaid care in 2021, valued at an estimated $600 billion, up $130 billion since the previous estimate in 2019. (AARP, Valuing the Invaluable 2023)
- The economic value of unpaid care in the UK is £184 billion a year, up 29% since 2011 because families are providing more hours of care than ever before. (Centre for Care research, via Carers UK)
- 2.6 million people in the UK have given up work to care, around 600 people a day. (Carers UK, Key facts and figures)
The health toll on carers and caregivers
Caring is consistently associated with worse physical health, worse mental health and more loneliness than the general population, in every country that measures it.
- Only 17% of Australian carers report good or excellent health, compared with 46% of other Australians. (AIHW, reporting the Carer Wellbeing Survey 2024)
- 40% of Australian carers report high levels of loneliness, compared with 14% of other Australian adults. (AIHW, reporting the Carer Wellbeing Survey 2024)
- 54% of Australian carers report high to very high psychological distress, up from 48% in 2020. (AIHW, reporting the National Carer Survey 2024)
- In the UK, 74% of carers say they have felt stressed or anxious and 40% feel depressed; 42% say their physical health has suffered as a result of caring. (Carers UK, State of Caring 2025)
- Census 2021 found about 1 in 4 carers in England and Wales report "not good health", after adjusting for age, compared with fewer than 1 in 5 non-carers. (Census 2021, via Carers UK)
The wait for aged care
For Australian sandwich carers, the gap between a parent being approved for aged care and actually receiving it is where much of the family care load lands. The starkest measure of that gap:
- 4,812 older Australians died in the last year waiting for aged care they had already been approved for: thirteen people a day, and a 42% increase on the year before. The figure is not routinely published; it surfaces only through Senate questioning. (FACES, a campaign by Vera)
For the systems families navigate while they wait, see our guide to the sandwich generation in Australia.
The demographic wave ahead
Every number above is set to grow, because the populations most likely to need care are growing faster than the pool of people available to provide it.
- Australians aged 65 and over will grow from 17% of the population in 2022 to between 25% and 27% by 2071; those aged 85 and over will grow from 2.1% to between 5.2% and 6.4% over the same period. (ABS, Population Projections, Australia)
- Demand for informal carers in Australia was projected to grow from 1.25 million in 2020 to 1.54 million in 2030 (23%), while supply grows only 16%, so the carer ratio falls from 53.8% to 50.6%: a widening carer gap. (Deloitte Access Economics for Carers Australia, The Value of Informal Care in 2020)
- The US caregiver population grew by 20 million people in a decade (from 2015 to 2025), the clearest measure yet of how fast family caregiving is expanding. (NAC/AARP, Caregiving in the US 2025)
Methodology and sourcing
Every statistic on this page was checked against the named primary source linked beside it: the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Deloitte Access Economics (for Carers Australia), Pew Research Center, the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, Carers UK, the UK Office for National Statistics, and the FACES campaign by Vera. Where a source reports a survey year (for example, ABS 2022 or AARP's 2021 valuation), that year is stated with the figure. Last verified 16 August 2026; sources linked inline. If you spot a number that has since been superseded, let us know.
Frequently asked questions
How many people are in the sandwich generation?
In the United States, Pew Research Center found that 23% of adults have a parent aged 65 or older and are either raising a child under 18 or financially supporting an adult child; among Americans in their 40s it is 54%. Australia and the UK do not publish an official sandwich-generation count, but Australia has 3.0 million unpaid carers (ABS, 2022) and the UK has 5.8 million (Census 2021, via Carers UK), many of whom are also raising children.
How many unpaid carers are there in Australia?
The ABS Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers found 3.0 million carers in Australia in 2022, up from 2.6 million in 2018. That is around one in eight Australians (11.9%). About 1.2 million are primary carers, and two-thirds of primary carers are women.
What is unpaid family care worth?
Replacing Australia’s unpaid care with paid care would have cost an estimated $77.9 billion in 2020 (Deloitte Access Economics for Carers Australia). In the US, AARP valued family caregivers’ 36 billion hours of unpaid care in 2021 at $600 billion. In the UK, Centre for Care research puts the value of unpaid care at £184 billion a year.
How many hours a week do family carers spend caring?
Australian primary carers provide an average of 35.2 hours of care per week (Deloitte Access Economics, 2020), and 30.3% of primary carers spend 40 or more hours a week caring (ABS, 2022). US caregivers average 27 hours per week, with 24% providing 40 or more hours (Caregiving in the US 2025). In the UK, 1.7 million people provide 50 or more hours of care every week (Carers UK).
Can I cite these statistics?
Yes. Each figure on this page links to its named primary source (ABS, AIHW, Pew Research Center, AARP, the National Alliance for Caregiving, Carers UK, ONS, Deloitte Access Economics and the FACES campaign). Cite the primary source where you can; this page was last verified on 16 August 2026.
Behind the numbers
The statistics describe the squeeze; the conversations explain it.