As death rates continue to fall, baby boomers will have to develop non-traditional caregiver networks, or pay for long-term care facility care, according to a new report.

Today, up to 70% of the care provided to the elderly comes from an informal network of spouses, children and close family. But the baby-boom generation is unlike previous generations in that they have relatively few children, and stable couples are a rarity, according to researchers at the Université de Montréal. Baby boomers “risk finding themselves in difficult circumstances and might have to turn to the public system or pay their way,” says professor Jacques Légaré, who authored the study of aging boomers.

Friends, siblings or cousins could make up a new, non-traditional model of caregiving for seniors who can’t afford assisted living or skilled nursing care, Légaré suggests. The paper was presented this week at the 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Concordia University in Montreal.