A new study, published in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics, estimates that the unpaid care by family members for medically complex children would cost approximately $6,400 per child if it were paid.
“We estimated that if families didn’t provide this care, it would cost between $11.9 billion and $35 billion per year to have others come into the home to provide the same care,” says senior author Dr. Mark Schuster, chief of general pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School.