November is family caregivers month, which recognizes the time and work that millions of Americans invest in caring for their parents, grandchildren, siblings — anyone outside the traditional ‘parent-child under 18’ caregiving structure. We’re closing out the month with a look at grandparents who are the primary caregivers for their grandchildren in the 10-county area.

The interactive map below shows, for counties and census tracts,  the rates of grandparents responsible for caring for their grandchildren. The pop-up contains additional details about the number of grandparents who live with grandchildren younger than 18 (the denominator for this rate), as well as the margin of error for these estimates. The tract-level map offers an impression of where we might find higher or lower concentrations of parents responsible for grandchildren throughout our 10 member counties. The margins of error in the tract-level pop-ups are particularly important — in some tracts where we see high rates, we’re looking at very small numbers of people and, as such, high margins of error.

There are, of course, many more types of unpaid family caregivers than grandparents caring for grandchildren. The Administration for Community Living says families are the primary source of care and support for Americans living with disabilities as well as for older adults. The Caregiver Action Network, which spearheads the initiative, says that there are more than 90 million Americans caring for loved ones grappling with chronic disease, old age, disabilities and other challenges. Mental Health America says that there are more than 53 million unpaid caregivers nationwide, a number that includes friends and neighbors in addition to family. The group estimates that nearly a third of these caregivers take care of someone with a mental illness. One of the reasons we can see such wide variation in the numbers is that different groups have different criteria for what it means to be a family caregiver. Numbers at smaller geographic scales are even harder to come by, hence the reason we map the variation on the definition that the American Community Survey calculates when it releases data.