Determining the Amount of Help Used by Disabled Elderly at Home: The Role ofCoping Resources. Abstract, Executive Summary, and Final Report

摘要

The aim of the study is to quantify the effects of coping resources on the amount(hours) of help used by disabled elderly persons in their homes. The study is based on the Long Term Care Survey (NLTCS) of 1989 which has information on hours of help, an essential variable for this analysis. The distribution of help hours is very skewed, mirroring the skewness in the distribution of limitations in physical and cognitive functioning. The most important coping resources are the combinations of helpers who join forces to help a disabled person and the coresidence with a helper. The effects of these networks are large and consistent across martial statuses and living arrangements. Because the networks are more extensive for married than for unmarried persons, the former receive more help than the latter. The combination of a spouse and children enables a married person to have 66 additional hours of help per week; the combination of adult children and others enable an unmarried person to receive 40 additional weekly hours if he/she coresides with other adults and 20 additional hours if he/she does not. At present, the amount of help depends mostly on the networks of unpaid helpers. The issue of concern for public policy is whether such informal networks can be preserved and, if not, what is the dollar value to be paid for formal help. A corollary issue is whether, in the process of shifting to more paid help, living arrangements will shift from shared living quarters with a helper to congregated assisted living facilities in the community. The findings from the study, which quantify the effects of living arrangements and combinations of helpers, can provide information to suggest that magnitudes of help hours affected by such shifts.