Search results for ‘Subject term:"older people"’ Sort:
Results 1 - 9 of 9
Attendance Allowance and Disability Living Allowance claimants in the older population: is there a difference in their economic circumstances?
- Authors:
- HANCOCK Ruth, MORCIANO Marcello, PUDNEY Stephen
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 20(2), June 2012, pp.191-206.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
In the United Kingdom, there are two alternative social security benefits for older people with disabilities. The UK Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is a non-means-tested cash benefit claimable only before age 65, although receipt can continue beyond 65. The similar Attendance Allowance (AA) can be claimed only from age 65 and in some cases is worth less than DLA. DLA is being replaced by Personal Independence Payment (PIP) which, like DLA, will have advantages over AA. These advantages are sometimes justified on grounds that DLA recipients have longer histories of disability and consequently lower incomes. In this study, data were drawn from the UK Family Resource Survey, and included 32,384 people aged 65 and over, and 93,260 aged 30 to 64. The authors concluded that any reform of the disability benefit system for older people which is less favourable towards people who are first entitled to a disability benefit after reaching 65 is not based on evidence.
Ageing, income and living standards: evidence from the British Household Panel Survey
- Authors:
- BERTHOUD Richard, BLEKESAUNE Morten, HANCOCK Ruth
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 29(7), October 2009, pp.1105-1122.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
In Britain, older people have lower average incomes and a higher risk of income poverty than the general population. Older pensioners are more likely to be in poverty than younger ones. Yet certain indicators of their living standards suggest that older people experience less hardship than expected, given their incomes. A possible explanation is that older people convert income into basic living standards at a higher rate than younger people, implying that as people age they need less income to achieve a given standard of living. Much existing evidence has been based on cross-sectional data and therefore may not be a good guide to the consequences of ageing. Longitudinal data was used on people aged at least 50 years from the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the effects of ageing on the relationship between standard of living, as measured by various deprivation indices, and income. It was found that for most indices, ageing increases deprivation when controlling for income and other factors. The exception is a subjective index of ‘financial strain’, which appears to fall as people age. Evidence of cohort effects were also found. At any given age and income, more-recently-born older people in general experience more deprivation than those born longer ago. To some extent these ageing and cohort effects balance out, which suggests that pensions do not need to change with age.
Older carers in the UK: are there really gender differences? New analysis of the Individual Sample of Anonymised Records from the 2001 UK Census
- Authors:
- DEL BONO Emilia, SALA Emanuela, HANCOCK Ruth
- Journal article citation:
- Health and Social Care in the Community, 17(3), May 2009, pp.267-273.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
The aim of this paper is to disentangle the role of gender and partnership status in the caring commitments of older people (age 65 and over). Logistic and interval regression models are applied to individual records from the 2001 UK Census to estimate: (1) the impact of gender on the likelihood of being a carer; (2) the impact of gender on the hours of care provided; and (3) the impact of gender on the likelihood of being a carer for different groups defined by marital status. In the general population the share of women who provide care is higher than the corresponding share of men, but men have a higher probability of being carers among people aged 65 or above. This phenomenon is largely explained by gender differences in marital status. As older men are more likely to be married, and married people are more likely to be carers, higher levels of caring among older men were observed. Once differences in marital status are accounted for, the relationship between gender and care provision among older people is overturned. It was found that without controlling for household size, limiting long-term illness or marital status, the odds of being an informal carer are lower for older women than men. Once these factors are accounted for, older women have higher odds of caring than older men. Restricting the sample to care providers, and controlling for the same factors, it is shown that older women supply more hours of care per week than older men. Gender differences in the provision of care among older people disappear only when considering married individuals and adjusting for the presence of other household residents affected by a limiting long-term illness.
Assessing the distributional impact of reforms to disability benefits for older people in the UK: implications of alternative measures of income and disability costs
- Authors:
- HANCOCK Ruth, PUDNEY Stephen
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 34(2), 2014, pp.232-257.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
The UK Attendance Allowance (AA) and Disability Living Allowance (DLA) are non-means-tested benefits paid to many disabled people aged 65 + . They may also increase entitlements to means-tested benefits through the Severe Disability Premium (SDP). The authors investigate proposed reforms involving withdrawal of AA/DLA. Despite their present non-means-tested nature, they show that withdrawal would affect mainly low-income people, whose losses could be mitigated if SDP were retained at its current or a higher level. The authors also show the importance of the method of describing distributional impacts and that use of inappropriate income definitions in official reports has overstated recipients' capacity to absorb the loss of these benefits. (Publisher abstract)
Housing wealth, income and financial wealth of older people in Britain
- Author:
- HANCOCK Ruth
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 18(1), January 1998, pp.5-33.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
Explores the housing wealth of older people in Britain in relation to their incomes and financial wealth. Uses the Family Expenditure Survey data for 1992/3 to 1993/4 to assess the extent to which housing wealth could alleviate income poverty in old age. Analysis suggests that although housing wealth increases with both income and financial wealth, there are non-negligible portions of low income older people who could generate small supplements to their incomes by converting the wealth tied up in their homes into an income stream. However, asks whether this be sufficient to pay for long-term residential care for any length of time.
Elder abuse: can the British OPCS disability surveys throw any light
- Authors:
- MCCREADIE Claudine, HANCOCK Ruth
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Elder Abuse and Neglect, 8(4), 1997, pp.31-42.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
Original analysis of data from the British national disability surveys is undertaken to throw light on the problem of elder abuse. The prevalence of behavioural problems among individuals living in private households in Great Britain in 1985 is described, and the ages and living arrangements of those with potentially aggressive behaviour is examined. The data suggest that the potential abuse arises in a variety of living arrangements. Tentative estimates are provided for the numbers of older people potentially at risk because they themselves have, or living with someone who has, a disability that involves violent or aggressive behaviour.
Trends in survival of older care home residents in England: a 10-year multi-cohort study
- Authors:
- PUJOL Ferran Espuny, HANCOCK Ruth, MORCIANO Marcello
- Journal article citation:
- Social Science and Medicine, early cite 31 March 2021, p.113883.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
Increases in longevity combined with a policy emphasis on caring for older people in their own homes could have widened or narrowed the survival gap between care home and community-dwelling resident older people. Knowledge of pre-Covid-19 trends in this gap is needed to assess the longer-term impacts of the pandemic. We provide evidence for England on recent trends in 1, 2 and 3-year mortality amongst care home residents aged 65+ compared with similar community-dwelling residents. We use the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, a nationally representative primary care database. For each of the ten years from 2006 to 2015, care home and community-dwelling residents aged 65+ were identified and matched in the ratio 1:3, according to age, gender, area deprivation and region. Cox survival analyses were used to estimate mortality risks for care home residents in comparison with similar community-dwelling people, adjusting for age, gender, area deprivation and region. The study sample consisted of ten overlapping cohorts averaging 5,495 care home residents per cohort. Adjusted mortality risks increased over the study period for care home residents while decreasing slightly for matched community-dwelling residents. The relative risks (RRs) of mortality associated with care home residence were higher for younger ages and shorter follow-up periods, in all years. Over the decade, the RRs increased, most at younger ages and for shorter follow-up periods (e.g. for the age group 65–74 years, 1-year average RR increased by 61% from 5.4 to 8.8, while for those aged 85-94 years and over, 3-year RR increased by 22% from 1.3 to 1.6). Thus the survival gap between older care home and community-dwelling residents has been widening, especially at younger ages. In due course, it will be possible to establish to what extent the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in further growth in this gap. (Edited publisher abstract)
Winners and losers: assessing the distributional effects of long-term care funding regimes
- Authors:
- HANCOCK Ruth, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Society, 6(3), July 2007, pp.379-395.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
Using two linked simulation models, we examine the public expenditure costs and distributional effects of potential reforms to long-term care funding in the UK. Changes to the means tests for user contributions to care costs are compared with options for the abolition of these means tests (‘free’ personal care). The latter generally cost more than the former and benefit higher income groups more than those on lower incomes (measuring income in relation to the age-specific income distribution). Reforms to the means tests target benefits towards those on lower incomes. However, the highest income group are net losers if free personal care is financed by a higher tax rate on higher incomes and the effect on the whole population considered.
Older couples and long-term care: the financial implications of one spouse entering private or voluntary residential or nursing home care
- Authors:
- HANCOCK Ruth, WRIGHT Fay
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 19(2), March 1999, pp.209-237.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
A minority of older people who move into long-term institutional care are married and have spouses who continue living in the community. This article uses data from the Family Expenditure Survey on the incomes of older married couples to examine the financial implications for couples of one spouse entering residential or nursing home care, taking into account local authority procedures for assessing residents' contributions to charges and Income Support rules as they apply to both spouse. It looks in particular at the consequences of alternative ways couples might share their incomes, and alternative treatments of such sharing by local authorities and the Department of Social Security.