· ·One adult in eight (13%) was providing informal care and one in 6 households (17%) contained a carer.
· Four per cent of adults cared for someone living with them and 8% looked after people living elsewhere. The survey findings
indicate that there are about 5.7 million carers overall in Great Britain with about 1.9 million caring for someone in the same
household.
· Four per cent of adults in Great Britain (representing about 1.7 million) devoted at least twenty hours per week to caring and
8% (about 3.7 million) carried the main responsibility for looking after someone (that is, they spent more time than anyone else on
the dependant).
· Women were more likely to be carers than men but the difference was not very marked, 14% compared with 11%. However,
since there are more women than men in the total adult population of Great Britain, it is true that the number of women caring is
considerably greater than that of men, 3.3 million compared with 2.4 million.
· The small difference between the proportions of women and men caring was attributable to the higher proportion of women
looking after someone outside the household (10% of women and 7% of men). Women were also more likely to carry the main
responsibility for caring (9% of women and 6% of men).
· Five per cent of adults looked after parents and 3% cared for friends and neighbours.
· The peak age for caring was 45-64. One fifth of adults in this age group were providing informal care.
· Among men of working age, one in six of the economically inactive were carers compared with one in ten of those in work or
unemployed. Among non-married women the proportion caring varied little according to economic status, but among married
women, the economically inactive were the group most likely to be caring followed by those working part time.
ii) Who is caring for whom?
· In total, 18% of carers were looking after more than one dependant. Nine out of ten carers were looking after someone who
was related to them; four out of ten were caring for parents or parents-in-law and two out of ten were looking after a spouse.
· Where carers were looking after someone in their own household, just over a half were caring for a spouse; just over a fifth
were caring for parents or parents-in-law and a similar proportion were caring for children.
· Of carers with dependants in other households, just over a half were looking after parents or parents-in-law; a fifth were caring
for relations other than parents or children and just over a fifth were looking after friends or neighbours.
· Sixty per cent of carers had dependants with physical disabilities only; a further 15% had dependants with mental and physical
disabilities and seven per cent had dependants with mental disabilities only. Almost all remaining carers said that their dependant's
disability was the result of ageing.

statistics from the General Household Survey 1995