Low Income Family Essay

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The correlation between families of lower income and the increased likelihood of elder abuse can be most attributed to one aspect, stress placed upon the caregiver. While lower income families may already have a higher amount of stress, the increased responsibility of having to take care of another person that was previously able to take care of themselves, could easily increase the stress level of a lower income family. The caregiving family may now be faced with a financial burden, extremely close and extended contact, and the decisions of the elderly person’s life may now rest on that one family or person. The first increased stress that may lead to elder abuse would be the financial strain placed upon the low income family. The elderly person may have had to work paycheck to paycheck while they were in the workforce and might not have saved up enough money for retirement. Now that the elderly person is out of money, the family would now have to pay for any medical bills that the elderly person would accumulate. The family would also have to either take them into their home or try to find the money for a nursing home. All of these expenses would add up very quickly and would put a huge strain on any family relationships, but the stress would be even higher in a low income family …show more content…

When the elderly person moves into a family’s home they are then put in very close contact with the family and may be in this close contact for an extended period of time. The aforementioned tension caused by the financial burden of taking in the elderly person may lead to hard feelings of the family towards the elderly person. These feelings may themselves lead to elder abuse or may just continue to stack up against the elderly person until someone in the family makes the decision to start to abuse the elderly

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