Summary:
- 1.4 million people in the UK are in the sandwich generation, raising a dependent child while also providing unpaid care to a sick, disabled, or older relative, according to ONS data covering January 2021 to May 2023
- The sandwich generation report significantly worse financial and mental health outcomes than the general population: 43% have a gross household income of £20,000 or less, and 31% show signs of depression or anxiety, compared to 24% of all adults
- Carers of elderly relatives who cut back working hours lose an average of £6,268 a year in income, according to a January 2026 Just Group survey, on top of averaging £100 a month in direct out-of-pocket caring costs
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being needed in two directions at once. A school run in the morning, a parent’s hospital appointment in the afternoon. A teenager’s exam stress alongside a father who’s started forgetting things. It’s daily life for a growing number of UK households.
This is the sandwich generation: people who are simultaneously raising their own children and supporting an ageing parent or relative, financially, practically, or both. According to the Office for National Statistics, in the period from January 2021 to May 2023, there were 1.4 million such carers in the UK aged 16 to 64.
Here’s what the data says about the actual cost, in money, time, and wellbeing, and what’s worth doing about it.
Who’s in the sandwich generation
The ONS defines a sandwich carer as someone with a dependent child in the household (aged 18 or under, in full-time education) who also provides unpaid care to a sick, disabled, or older relative, whether that relative lives with them or not.
The same ONS data shows this group skews female (61%) and is concentrated in the 45-64 age bracket (51%). Most are providing a manageable amount of care: 71% give under 20 hours a week. But more than a quarter, 26%, are providing 20 hours a week or more, on top of raising children, which is functionally a second unpaid job.
Both the ONS and Age UK describe the sandwich generation as a growing phenomenon, driven by two converging trends: people having children later in life, and rising life expectancy meaning parents need care for longer. Neither body has published a precise growth rate for this specific group, so it’s worth treating this as a directional trend rather than a hard figure, but the underlying drivers are well documented. The House of Commons Library, citing ONS population projections, notes that the proportion of the UK population aged 65 and over is projected to rise from 19% in 2022 to 27% by 2072.
The financial squeeze is real, and measurable
The sandwich generation are financially worse off than the general population by almost every measure the ONS tracks. 43% have a gross household income of £20,000 a year or less, compared to 32% of all adults, a figure that rises to 64% among those providing 20 or more hours of care a week. 16% say they find it “quite” or “very” difficult to manage financially, against 9% of all adults. 8% say they ran out of food in the past 12 months due to lack of money, more than the 5% figure for all adults, and rising sharply to 17% among the heaviest-hours carers.
The income hit specifically from caring for an elderly relative is significant on its own. A Just Group survey of 1,000 people aged 45-75, published January 2026, found carers who reduced working hours lost an average of £522 a month, or £6,268 a year, in income. Around 14% saw their income fall by more than £1,000 a month. On top of that, out-of-pocket caring costs, transport, equipment, care products, average around £100 a month, with more than 1 in 10 carers spending over £200 a month.
The same survey found nearly 4 in 10 carers of an elderly relative have either stopped working altogether (9%) or reduced their hours (28%) to manage caring responsibilities. Among those who are the sole carer for a relative, those figures rise to 14% and 33% respectively.
It’s not just current income, it’s your retirement too
The financial cost of caring doesn’t stop when the caring does. It follows carers into retirement.
Research by Standard Life’s Centre for the Future of Retirement, published June 2026, found that carers aged 60-65 have 17% less pension wealth than the UK average, a shortfall of roughly £37,000, and 47% of carers in that age group have no private pension savings at all. The same research cites DWP and IFS analysis showing that by ages 55-65, only around 3 in 10 carers have had a sustained full-time work history, compared to around 4 in 10 non-carers.
Carers UK’s State of Caring research found that 69% of employed carers say they haven’t been able to focus on their career as much as they’d like, and 21% took a lower-paid or more junior role because of their caring responsibilities. Separately, Carers UK’s 2026 “tipping point” report found 47% of working carers are considering reducing their hours or leaving work entirely, and 35% cite the lack of affordable, reliable social care as the reason they can’t stay in work.
If you’re weighing up how a career change or reduced hours might affect your household’s long-term position, our guide to UK personal pensions is worth reading before making a decision, not after.
The wellbeing cost is significant too
This isn’t only a financial story. The ONS found that 31% of the sandwich generation show evidence of depression or anxiety on a standard clinical screening measure, compared to 24% of all adults, and 19% report a current, doctor-diagnosed depression, against 13% of all adults. For carers providing the heaviest combined load, caring both inside and outside the home, that rises to 49% showing signs of depression or anxiety and 52% reporting a current diagnosis.
The same ONS data shows the sandwich generation are less satisfied than the general population with their leisure time (50% versus 59%), their income (49% versus 60%), and their overall health (57% versus 63%). None of this is surprising once you consider what’s actually being asked of this group day to day, but it’s worth having the numbers in front of you rather than assuming it’s just “part of getting older” for the families going through it.
What elderly care actually costs
Part of what makes this financially hard is that formal social care in the UK is expensive, and most families end up contributing to it in some way, even when a parent is entitled to council support.
According to Age UK, home care costs around £25 an hour, a residential care home averages around £949 a week, and a nursing home averages around £1,267 a week. Separate analysis by Which?, citing LaingBuisson’s market data, found England-wide weighted averages of £1,042 a week for residential care and £1,372 a week for nursing care in 2024-25, up 28% and 27% respectively since 2021-22. Self-funders, families paying entirely out of pocket rather than receiving council support, typically pay more than council-funded rates for the same care.
Means-testing thresholds vary by nation. In England and Northern Ireland, someone with assets above £23,250 generally has to pay for their own care in full. In Scotland, the threshold is £35,000. In Wales, it’s a flat £50,000. The Dilnot reform, which would have capped total lifetime care costs at £86,000, was scrapped in July 2024 and hasn’t been reinstated.
There’s a genuine data gap here: no representative UK-wide study measures exactly what proportion of adult children top up a parent’s care costs, or by how much. What is clear is that the total bill for a care home place easily runs into tens of thousands of pounds a year, and many families do contribute directly, whether through formal top-up payments or informal financial support.
Government support exists, but the thresholds are tight
If you’re providing significant unpaid care, there’s some financial support available, though the eligibility bar is worth understanding properly before assuming you either do or don’t qualify.
Carer’s Allowance pays £86.45 a week. To qualify, you need to be providing at least 35 hours a week of care to someone who already receives a qualifying disability benefit (such as PIP or Attendance Allowance), and your own earnings must be £204 a week or less after tax, National Insurance, and allowable expenses. Scotland uses Carer Support Payment instead.
Carer’s Credit is available for those providing 20 or more hours of care a week. It’s not means-tested, and it protects your State Pension entitlement even if you’re not earning enough to pay National Insurance directly.
Attendance Allowance, paid to the person being cared for rather than the carer, is worth £76.70 or £114.60 a week depending on care needs, for people at or above State Pension age. It can also unlock other support, including eligibility for the carer to claim Carer’s Allowance.
The 35-hour and £204-a-week thresholds for Carer’s Allowance catch many people out, particularly those trying to balance part-time work with caring. It’s worth checking your specific situation against the current rules rather than assuming you’re excluded.
What the sandwich generation can actually do
None of the structural pressure here is something one household can fix alone. But there are concrete steps that reduce the financial damage.
Have the money conversation with your parents before a crisis forces it. Many families only discuss care costs and financial arrangements once a health emergency has already happened, at which point the options are fewer and the decisions are rushed. If you can, have an honest conversation about your parents’ savings, any care preferences, and what support they’d want from you, while everyone can still think clearly about it.
Check what you’re entitled to before assuming you’re not. The eligibility rules for Carer’s Allowance and Carer’s Credit are specific but not obscure. Given how many carers report financial strain, it’s worth the twenty minutes it takes to check your eligibility properly on GOV.UK.
Treat a reduction in working hours as a pension decision, not just an income decision. The data on pension shortfalls for carers is stark. If you’re considering cutting hours to manage caring responsibilities, work out what that specific decision costs your pension over time, not just your monthly pay packet, before you make it.
Build the caring cost into your household’s financial picture explicitly. It’s easy for caring costs, transport, equipment, incidental spending, to blur into general household spending and go untracked. Naming it as its own line item makes it visible, and visibility is usually the first step to managing it. Our guide to setting up a family financial dashboard covers how to bring scattered costs like this into one place.
Don’t carry it alone if you don’t have to. If you have siblings, a shared, explicit conversation about who contributes what, financially and practically, tends to reduce both resentment and financial strain compared to one person quietly absorbing the cost.
The bottom line
Being squeezed between two generations that both need you is exhausting in ways that are hard to fully capture in statistics, but the statistics do capture something real: worse financial outcomes, worse mental health outcomes, and a pension gap that persists well after the caring itself has ended.
None of that makes the situation hopeless. It makes it something worth naming clearly, planning around deliberately, and not assuming you’re managing worse than everyone else. A lot of households are quietly carrying exactly this same weight.
Know Your Dosh can keep household finances on track together. Sign up for free to get started, or download our free app, with paid plans that scale with your financial complexity. Built for families managing money together, whatever the future holds.
FCA-regulated and trusted by families in over 100 countries tracking over £200 million in assets.
