A new study by the AARP (Valuing the invaluable) estimates that for the more than 40 million Americans caring for an elderly or disabled loved one, the value of their work is $450 billion a year. That's a good deal for society. But for the family members doing the work, the study finds they need a lot more help.

The study goes on to say about the caregivers.

…that those who cut back work lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in income over a lifetime… caregivers are also more prone to depression, physical ailments and social isolation. "They will burn out, they will get sick, and there will be no other option but to place someone in a nursing home, which is what nobody wants," Feinberg says.

For the entire story or to listen to an audio podcast… http://www.npr.org/2011/07/18/138163839/aarp-finds-toll-on-family-caregivers-is-huge 

This story reminded me of the Wages for Housework movement  of several decades ago which never received much traction, however the movement ran off some interesting numbers.

Housewives paid wages? By the government? That may seem outlandish to some, but consider the staggering amount of unpaid work carried out by women. In 1990, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated that women do two-thirds of the world's work for 5% of the income. In 1995, the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report announced that women's unpaid and underpaid labor was worth $11 trillion worldwide, and $1.4 trillion in the United States alone. Paying women the wages they "are owed" for unwaged work, as WFN puts it, would go a long way toward undoing these inequities and reducing women's economic dependence on men

For more… http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-2112401/Wages-for-Housework-the-movement.html