Introduction
Many older adults would require some extent of long-term care (LTC) later in life, with greater than half needing extra intensive assist, usually for an prolonged interval. The sources required to satisfy such high-intensity, long-duration LTC wants – offered by relations or by means of paid formal care – could be substantial. This paper addresses the query of whether or not older adults perceive their LTC dangers and whether or not the accuracy of their perceptions varies by socioeconomic traits.
Regardless of the massive literature on LTC dangers and insurance coverage, little or no analysis has targeted on whether or not folks have sense of how a lot assist they could want with day by day actions as they age. Those that overestimate their danger may restrict their retirement wealth spend down, unnecessarily limiting their consumption in retirement. Those that underestimate their danger may expertise unmet wants or need to spend all the way down to qualify for Medicaid.
This examine makes use of the Well being and Retirement Examine (HRS) to match two measures of self-assessed LTC dangers with goal chances of ending up with high-intensity care wants. The primary subjective measure is an individual’s perceived danger of ever transferring right into a nursing residence. The second measure is the perceived danger of being unable to handle their very own affairs because of cognitive limitations. The evaluation goals to judge the extent to which people precisely understand their dangers and the way their perceptions differ by socioeconomic group.
The dialogue proceeds as follows. The primary part supplies some background on LTC dangers general, how care is offered, and the restricted analysis on self-assessed LTC dangers. The second part describes the info and the questions used to solicit LTC perceptions. The third part discusses the mannequin to foretell future high-intensity care wants for present 65-year-olds. The fourth part assesses whether or not the accessible measures of subjective dangers seize the identical idea as the target dangers of high-intensity wants and reviews on how subjective assessments differ by socioeconomic group. The ultimate part concludes that neither of the subjective measures are good proxies for goal danger. However inspecting how the subjective responses differ by demographics does present some helpful insights. Particularly, Blacks and Hispanics seem optimistic about their future wants relative to different teams. And whereas ladies appear to pay attention to common LTC dangers, they could not notice that they face higher-than-average dangers of needing care. These findings are regarding as these teams not solely have the best goal dangers of needing high-intensity, long-duration care, in addition they have fewer sources to offer for this care.
