==== Front
Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.082
igaa057.082
Abstracts
Session 2817 (Paper)
Informal and Formal Caregiving Issues
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Caregiver Mental Health Outcomes: Are There Differences Across Generations?
Mage Susanna 1 Rath Laura 2 Wilber Kathleen 3 Gassoumis Zachary 3 1 
University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Los Angeles, California, United States
2 
Archstone Foundation, Long Beach, California, United States
3 
University of Southern California, Chatsworth, California, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”25 26
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Informal caregivers are a critical component of support for the rapidly aging population. Previous studies have addressed the effects of caregiving on mental health. However, they have not focused on differences among generational cohorts of caregivers of older adults, i.e., Millennial (born 1981-1996), Generation X (born 1965-1980), Baby Boomer (born 1946-1964), and Silent Generation (born 1928-1945). As the Millennial caregiver population grows in parallel with older adults and their increased needs, we must better understand Millennial responses to caregiving. Millennial caregivers provide a similar intensity of care as Baby Boomers in terms of hours per week but are more likely to be fully employed (40+ hours per week or more). We used caregiver data from the nationally representative Centers for Disease Control’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey from 2015-2017 to conduct negative binomial regression (n=50,745). Data analysis indicates that Millennial caregivers have an incidence rate ratio of 1.22 times more self-reported days of “stress, depression, and/or problems with emotions” compared to Generation X caregivers (p<0.01); 1.64 times compared to Baby Boomers (p<0.001); and 2.38 times compared to Silent Generation caregivers (p<0.001). Generational differences show that Millennial caregivers may have different needs than older generations of caregivers. Rather than assuming that the policies and interventions designed for older generations of caregivers will fit younger generations, implications of this work can help inform: 1) the design of programs to support caregivers’ mental health, and 2) policy considerations that address the unique needs of a younger caregiver population.