The Gini Coefficient of Care Jobs measures how paid care jobs are geographically distributed across the U.S. among those individuals at risk of needing care. A Gini Coefficient is a measure of resource distribution across a population. It is often used to measure income inequality, but here we use it to measure spatial inequality of paid care services to the population(s) most at-risk of needing those services. A Gini Coefficient of 0 indicates perfect equality, meaning paid care jobs are evenly distributed in areas where the at-risk individuals reside. A higher Gini Coefficient signals a greater mismatch in the availability of care by location.

The Care Ratio compares the number of individuals needing care—children, disabled, and elderly adults—to the number of available able-bodied adult caregivers in both the paid and unpaid economy. A Care Ratio of one means there is one potential caregiver for every person at risk of needing care. A ratio below one indicates more people at risk of needing care than available potential providers. A ratio above one implies more people potentially available to provide care compared to those at risk for needing care.

The Sandwich Generation Population tracks individuals who live with their own child under age 10 and spend at least one minute providing unpaid care for an elderly person needing support because of a condition related to aging. We present this both as a count and as a percentage of the total adult population.

Daily Caregiving Hours estimates the median hours per day spent in care activities for sandwich caregivers, computed using only responses from sandwich caregivers (as defined above) from the IPUMS ATUS.