The $300,000 millennial daughter tax

In 2023, Allison Hale realized her mother could no longer live on her own. Though she was relatively young at 67, her recent retirement had exacerbated a longtime struggle with drinking. She declined quickly, culminating in a diagnosis of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a dementia-like condition caused by alcohol-induced brain damage. Suddenly, she needed 24/7 assistance.

For Hale, who works full-time as a marketing director for a retirement plan adviser and is raising two teens on her own in Washington state, the only option was to move her mother into a residential memory-care facility in Oregon. None of its $9,000 monthly fee was covered by insurance.

Multiple times each week, Hale has made three-hour round-trip drives to check on her mom. She's also been on countless email threads and phone calls to navigate the labyrinthine private-care system. And then there's the sleep she's lost over what might happen once her mother's meager retirement savings — some $60,000 in total — ran out. All she knew was that the problem was on her to figure out. Her sole sibling, a brother, lives over 1,200 miles away.

"As the only daughter, it falls to me," Hale says.

While some millennials will soon be beneficiaries of the $100 trillion "great wealth transfer" from their aging boomer parents, most Americans "will have little left to pass onto future generations after depleting assets to pay for long-term care costs," according to a new policy brief from the Roosevelt Institute. The expenditures extend well beyond the roughly $7,200 in out-of-pocket charges US caregivers incur each year, according to the AARP. And daughters are often the ones who are left holding the bag.

The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 75 to 80% of US eldercare hours are performed by informal caregivers, an army of loved ones deputized into unpaid care roles by sheer necessity. The majority of those caregivers (61%) are women: the wives, close friends and, especially, daughters of the nation's elderly and infirm. Women account for nearly 70% of caregivers providing constant, round-the-clock care. Some, including Hale, rely on part- or full-time paid help. Most do not. Many must balance caregiving tasks with raising kids and holding down jobs.

When the load becomes too much to handle, their jobs and earnings often take a hit. Paid hours get surrendered; promotions get missed. Many leave the workforce entirely. These missed opportunities add up. By one recent estimate, unpaid family care costs American women an average of $295,000 in lost wages and retirement savings over the course of a lifetime.

The daughterhood penalty isn't merely a tax on adult daughters' time and emotional well-being; it's their and their family's whole financial future.

Seven in ten Americans over 65 will one day require long-term care, and at least one in five will need it for five or more years. Yet, according to recent polling, more than 60% of adults over 50 don't realize that long-term care is not covered by Medicare.

Many are unprepared for the associated expenses. Last year, the national median cost for assisted living and in-home care was nearly $80,000 per year. For a private room in a nursing home, that figure rose to $129,000 — more than double the $57,000 median household income of Americans 65 and older.

High costs, skilled-worker shortages, and a rapidly aging US population have compounded into a national caregiving crisis for which adult daughters are the frequent stopgap solution.

Hannah, a former federal government contractor in Louisiana in her early 50s, became her father's primary caregiver in December 2020 after he got sick in the memory-care facility where he'd spent the last several months. At the time, she was earning a $70,000 salary in a remote role that gave her the flexibility to help her dad, who has dementia and heart failure. It wasn't easy, but she made it work.

Then, in 2023, Hannah was laid off. Due to her father's ever-intensifying medical requirements and the high cost of professional care, she hasn't worked full-time since. "Even if I found a job right now, I would make less than the cost of a semi-private room in a really subpar nursing home," says Hannah, who requested I use a pseudonym for her for fear of personal and professional retribution. She says that her brother, despite having been close to their father, has made clear that he wants no part of the personal or financial responsibility.

Hannah and her father are now both living from his retirement income and assets, effectively depleting what would have been her inheritance. She alternates between feeling like "the CEO in another person's life" and "an unemployed loser," but it's the best of the bad options at hand. "I'm not going to let him die just so I can have my career back," she says.

But the longer she is out of work, the harder it is to imagine a path forward. Her government security clearance has now lapsed, limiting her future job prospects. She has depleted her savings and stopped paying into her modest retirement account, which she may have to tap into if her father lives long enough — or if his medical costs intensify — to burn through what's left of his own.

"I'm doing this because I love my dad," Hannah says. "But it's a bad situation and, honestly, I don't know what the solution is. I kind of just accept that it sucks."

When daughters become caregivers early in their careers, the long-term penalties are especially steep. Tatianna Badichon was 23 when her mother underwent surgery to correct a degenerative spine disorder. Complications from the procedure caused severe nerve damage to her legs, which left her bedridden for four months and permanently limited her mobility, leaving her at a high risk for falls. Within a year, Badichon quit her job managing a beauty-supply store in New York City to care for her mom full-time.

Badichon is now nearly 41. For the past 17 years, she and her mother have relied on her mother's pension, disability income, and Medicare to survive. Several years ago, the pair gave up the rent-controlled West Village apartment they shared, and where Badichon grew up, to relocate to a mid-sized Pennsylvania city with a lower cost of living. They now occupy a "run-down" two-bedroom apartment for $1,200 per month. Her brother and only full sibling is estranged from the family, which she believes is for the best.

Though she doesn't resent her mother for needing care, she worries about the financial future she has jeopardized to take on the responsibility. "Every day, I think about my retirement," Badichon admits. "I think about where I'm going to live if something happens, because I don't have any family." She's also burned out and exhausted from the labor itself: helping her mom shower, get dressed, use the bathroom, and keep her wounds clean and dressed, on top of doing all the shopping and cleaning. "I always wish I had a sister who could help out; that would be great."

Even though financial privilege can make the sacrifices of caregiving easier to bear, it does not eliminate them. Gendered caregiving expectations still come into play.

Sandy, a physician in New England, feels fortunate to have had career flexibility, medical expertise, and housing that could accommodate her mother-in-law's caregiving needs during the year leading up to her death in 2025. She had grown up in a multigenerational home with her elderly grandmother and felt strongly that, when the time came for her own elderly parents and in-laws, she wanted them to stay with her, her husband, and their children. (Sandy is using a pseudonym to prevent personal and professional blowback.)

What she did not expect was that her mother-in-law's home hospice team would assign her the primary caregiving role — not because of her medical training, but because of her position as the proxy daughter. More than 3 in 5 Americans say that daughters are expected to become primary caregivers over sons, according to a recent BURD Home Health survey. Though her husband was always present thanks to a well-timed early-retirement package, caregivers expected Sandy to be the recordkeeper, medication-monitor, and question-answerer in her mother-in-law's care.

Sandy admits, "I felt more sensitive about it because of what I was giving up." For the better part of a year, while helping with her mother-in-law's care, she was unable to take on flexible paid work offers that would have netted her some $300,000 in wages, which may have stalled her professional momentum.

Researchers and caregiver support professionals I spoke with said that women encounter greater workplace stigma, and career consequences, for working alongside caregiving duties. A 2021 study of family caregivers participating in the National Family Caregiver Support program found that women are significantly more likely than men to report career impacts including time conflicts, shifting from full-time to part-time work, loss of employment benefits, and missed promotions due to caregiving. They are also more likely to use vacation time, take leaves of absence, and work fewer hours.

Without the cushion to absorb the associated financial setbacks, the daughterhood penalty can spill over to subsequent generations' financial trajectories. It is a cycle that Hale, the single mom in Washington, is determined to break.

After weighing her options, Hale made the difficult decision to move her mother into a private care facility that accepts Medicaid conversion so that, when she spends through what's left of her retirement savings, she will have a place to live that Hale won't need to pay for. It isn't an ideal fix — her mother will probably need to move into a shared room — but it's what makes the most sense. "I'm going to prioritize making sure that I have a big enough nest egg so that my kids don't have to go through what I'm going through right now," Hale explains.

For Hannah, who lacks a nest egg of her own, resignation has taken the place of planning for old age. "If you don't have a daughter or a son, or somebody who's willing to step up and just do what has to be done, there's no system," she says. "I don't have any kids. My plan is, my ass is gonna die."

Kelli María Korducki is a journalist whose work focuses on work, tech, and culture. She's based in New York City.