Understanding the Unmet Needs among Community-Dwelling Disabled Older People from a Linkage Perspective

Danxian Wu, Xiaolu Gao, Zhifei Xie and Zening Xu
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Danxian Wu: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Xiaolu Gao: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Zhifei Xie: University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Zening Xu: China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: One of the challenges in response to population aging is to meet needs for elderly care among older people especially for those who want to age in their homes or communities. However, disabled older people have more challenges due to their restricted mobility to access care resources than non-disabled ones. We propose a new framework based on the changing relationship between older people and their environment, in which resource linkage in elderly care utilization is emphasized. We conducted a survey with 139 participants (i.e., older people age 60 years or over with different level of disabilities) in three types of neighborhoods in Beijing, China. By conducting a decision tree analysis under the Person-Environment Link (P-E Link) model, we (1) characterized unmet needs for elderly care (activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) assistance) among community-dwelling disabled older people; (2) found disabled older people had more unmet needs for both ADL and IADL assistance because of a lack in linkages to care resources than non-disabled ones; and (3) characterized the linkages to care resources for better supporting disabled older people to age in place, including family support, social connection, and spatial environment. Our findings help improve the Anderson behavioral model by characterizing enabling environments, which highlights that not only the availability of enabling resources but also linkages to these enabling resources play an important role in meeting needs for care among disabled older people. Our findings can also inform improvements in policy design that are targeted to reduce elderly care inequalities.

Keywords: unmet needs; linkage; disabled older people; elderly care; enabling environment; community-based care; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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