Public preferences for paying for social care in later life in England: A latent class analysis

Sanna Read, Bob Erens, Raphael Wittenberg, Gerald Wistow, Francis Dickinson, Martin Knapp, Eva Cyhlarova and Nicholas Mays

Social Science & Medicine, 2021, vol. 274, issue C

Abstract: There is ongoing debate about how the funding system for social care of older people in England should best be reformed. We investigated how public attitudes to individual and state responsibility for paying for social care in later life vary with demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Four vignettes of individuals in need of home care or residential care with varying levels of savings, income and housing wealth were presented to a sample of people aged 18–75 years (n = 3000) in December 2018. Respondents were asked if care costs should be paid by the user, the state or shared. They were also asked about the best way to pay for social care in old age. Latent class analysis was used to identify sub-groups with similar preferences for paying for care, and to explore their socio-demographic characteristics. We identified five classes. The majority (Class 1, 58%) preferred that the state and the user should share social care costs. Class 2 (18%) thought that the state should pay all costs regardless of users' savings, income or housing wealth. Class 3 (15%) preferred users to pay all costs at all levels of savings, income and housing wealth, with the exception of those unable to afford the costs. Classes 4 and 5 (5% each) were characterised by different patterns of ‘don't know’ answers. Socio-economic status was higher among those proposing higher user contributions (Class 3) and lower among those with several ‘don't’ know’ responses (Classes 4 and 5). Concerns about care costs in old age were high among those proposing that the state pays all costs (Class 2) and those preferring that users pay all costs (Class 3). This study shows that public views on social care funding vary with respondents' characteristics and that proposals to reform the system need to be carefully calibrated.

Keywords: Social care of older people; Latent class analysis; Long-term care; Funding; Paying for care; Public attitudes; England (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621001350
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:274:y:2021:i:c:s0277953621001350

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113803

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().