This report on informal care is a joint initiative of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. Its genesis was an AIHW analysis of the likely future impact of certain social trends including, but not limited to, a reduced willingness of women to substitute unpaid caring work for paid employment.Building on this earlier work, the present report uses the results of the 1998 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers to present a picture of informal care in Contemporary Australia - who are the primary carers, who do they assist, and what does caring involve? It explores the impact of caring work and patterns of informal service use with informal care.