14% of clients with parents over age 65 pay for elder care

If your clients have aging parents, they might need to account for elder care in their cash-flow plans.

That’s because almost two million Canadians, or 14% of those with parents over the age of 65, incur care-related out-of pocket costs of $3,300 per year — translating into an annual cost of just over $6 billion, finds a CIBC study.

Read: Despite longer lives and more tech, Canadians fail to plan

Overall, elder care costs Canadians $33 billion a year in direct out-of-pocket expenses and time off work. And that number will increase over the next decade, as the share of Canadians aged 65 and older grows from its current level of 17% to roughly 22%.

Read: 37% of boomers question if they have enough savings

“An aging population combined with longer life spans and strained social services has in recent years seen more and more Canadians taking on the role of caregiver for their aging parents,” says CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal in a report. “And in the coming years, that tendency is only likely to intensify.”

He continues: “Add in the fact that costs associated with the elderly are already rising faster than the pace of inflation because of the high demand for such goods and services, and you can see that this will be a major concern for a growing number of Canadians in the years to come.”

Read: Your guide to inflation-proofing clients’ lives

He adds that Canada’s changing demographics will affect everything from interest rates to consumer preferences.

About the survey: CIBC’s online survey was conducted March 16–20 among Canadian adults who are Angus Reid Forum panellists. The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys can’t be assigned a margin of error because they don’t randomly sample the population.

Also read: Should retirement age eligibility be based on life expectancy?

Staff, with files from The Canadian Press

The Canadian Press is a national news agency headquartered in Toronto and founded in 1917.