Future caregivers: projected family structures of older persons.

Elderly persons depend upon spouses and children for emotional, physical, and financial support. In particular, the use of institutional long-term care has been shown to vary by family status. Changes in past and future levels of mortality, fertility, marriage, and divorce will influence the probability that elderly persons of the future have surviving spouses and children. This research uses multiple decrement life tables and component projection methods to project the future family status of elderly persons until the year 2020. The high level of fertility among women during the 1950s will result in greater proportions of future elderly persons having surviving children. Declines in mortality, coupled with increases in rates of marriage, increase the probability that both men and women will have spouses surviving in their old age.