Table 2.

Care recipient characteristics and caregiving details for rural and urban caregivers.

Variable	Category	Rural Caregivers N=3,168	Urban Caregivers N=4,268	p-value1
		Weighted %	Weighted %
Care recipient gender	Female	62.7	63.3	0.74
Care recipient age	0–17	3.6	4.0	0.96
	18–34	4.8	4.8
	35–54	12.5	13.5
	55–64	13.2	13.5
	65–74	17.3	16.4
	75 or older	48.6	47.7
Care recipient is caregiver’s…	Parent or parent-in-law	41.6	43.6	0.38
	Spouse	12.8	10.3	0.03
	Other relative	30.2	31.3	0.59
	Non-relative	15.3	14.8	0.75
Care recipient’s major health problem, identified by caregiver	Alzheimer’s disease or dementia	12.3	12.0	0.82
	Cancer	10.1	8.9	0.35
	Diabetes	8.1	6.5	0.11
	Heart disease	7.2	6.0	0.26
	Arthritis	6.9	5.4	0.17
	Stroke	5.0	5.2	0.87
Area in which care recipient needs most help	Self-care	18.1	18.0	0.94
	Household care	29.3	29.9	0.74
	Communicating with others	1.9	2.2	0.47
	Learning or remembering	2.7	2.4	0.73
	Seeing or hearing	1.1	1.1	0.92
	Moving around within home	4.7	4.5	0.78
	Transportation outside the home	24.0	25.5	0.37
	Getting along with people	0.8	1.0	0.34
	Feeling anxious or depressed	4.7	4.3	0.68
	Something else	5.5	7.3	0.10
Length of care	0–3 months	20.2	23.1	0.24
	4–12 months	20.6	19.4
	13–24 months	13.7	13.7
	25–60 months	22.1	18.6
	>60 months	23.4	25.1
Hours of care provided per week, on average	0–8	53.5	57.3	0.13
	9–19	18.5	14.8
	20–39	12.0	12.8
	40 or more	16.0	15.1
Greatest difficulty faced by caregiver	Financial burden	6.1	5.2	0.29
	Not enough time for him/herself	5.8	9.0	0.002
	Not enough time for family	5.6	4.7	0.23
	Interferes with work	3.2	3.5	0.60
	Creates stress	19.9	21.7	0.26
	Creates or aggravates health problems	3.0	2.8	0.74
	Affects family relationships	2.9	5.0	0.007
	Another difficulty	5.5	7.3	0.10
	No difficulty	47.9	40.9	0.0001

¹P-value based on chi-square test comparing weighted percentage of rural caregivers to urban caregivers in each category