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Ideals lost? Current trends in Scandinavian welfare policies on ageing
- Author:
- DAATLAND Svein Olav
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of European Social Policy, 2(1), 1992, pp.33-47.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Considers the extent to which the traditional ideals underlying the Scandinavian welfare state - solidaristic and egalitarian - are under threat in the light of signs of less state ambition, and public criticisms about the amount of public expenditure.
Older women: work and caregiving in conflict?: a study of four countries
- Authors:
- MULLER Charlotte, VOLKOV Oleg
- Journal article citation:
- Social Work in Health Care, 48(7), October 2009, pp.665-695.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
Caring issues are important for industrialised societies that have been undergoing population ageing. In this article we consider caring as a factor in the outlook for midlife and older women with respect to economic security and economic advancement. We use demographic and economic data from the United States, France, Sweden and the United Kingdom, in particular to document the importance of continued labour force participation for older women to make ends meet in an era of high household costs of physician services, prescription drugs and other health-related services, and uncertainties about pensions. Data on employment status, industry, and occupation of economically active women in comparison with men indicate the extent of both gender gaps and progress affecting women's resources. The research of Dr. Myrna Lewis was a stimulus to the present exploration.
Time use and costs of institutionalised elderly persons with or without dementia: results from the Nordanstig cohort in the Kungsholmen Project - a population based study in Sweden
- Authors:
- NORDBERG Gunilla, et al
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 22(7), July 2007, pp.639-648.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
The aging of the population has become a worldwide phenomenon. This leads to increased demand for services and with limited resources it is important to find a way to estimate how resources can be match to those with greatest need. This study aimed to analyse time use and costs in institutional care in relation to different levels of cognitive and functional capacity for elderly persons. The population consisted of all institutionalised inhabitants, 75 + years, living in a rural community (n = 176). They were clinically examined by physicians and interviewed by nurses. Staff and informal care-giving time was examined with the RUD (Resource Utilization in Dementia) instrument. Tobit regression analyses showed that having dementia increased the amount of ADL care time with 0.9 h when compared to those not having dementia, whereas each loss of an ADL function (0-6) added 0.6 h of ADL care time. Analysing the total care time use, the presence of dementia added more than 9 h, while each loss of one ADL function added 2.9 h. There were some informal care contributions, however with no correlation to severity in dependency. The estimated cost for institutional care increased with more than 85% for people being dependent in 5-6 ADL activities compared to persons with no functional dependency, and with 30% for persons with dementia compared to the non-demented. There is a variation in time use in institutional settings due to differences in ADL dependency but also whether dementia is present or not. This variation has implications for costs of institutional care.
Financial gerontology and the middle ageing of the world: the U.K. in international perspective
- Author:
- CUTLER Neal E.
- Journal article citation:
- Generations Review, 7(2), June 1997, pp.4-6.
- Publisher:
- British Society of Gerontology
Discusses the ageing of the population in the United Kingdom from a comparative perspective. Looks in particular at the role of middle age to the future financing of older age.
Den nya aldreomsorgen (The new elder care)
- Authors:
- EDELBALK Gunnar, LINDGREN Bjorn
- Journal article citation:
- Nordisk Sosialt Arbeid, 4,, 1995, pp.269-278.
- Publisher:
- Universitetsforlaget AS
Eldercare in Sweden since the middle of the 1960s has been characterized by a heavy drive towards helping old people live at home with support from home help. The state subsidised municipal eldercare in two ways: through state contributions to home help and through housing benefit. There were no comparable forms of support for old people's homes. In the 1980s the problems of the existing eldercare policy became obvious. Home residence with home help proved to be relatively expensive for pensioners with large care needs. The economic strains and the new cost-awareness led to a reappraisal of the policy. In 1992 the municipalities were given total responsibility for elder-care and medical care for the elderly. The new conditions have given Swedish eldercare a new direction. It has become less generous. A new form of care, half-way between old people's homes and nursing homes, is being developed.
Home care for the elderly in Sweden, Germany and Italy: a case of multi‐level governance strategy‐making
- Authors:
- LONGO Francesco, NOTARNICOLA Elisabetta
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Administration, 52(7), 2018, pp.1303-1316.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Home care is a policy field characterized by strong interdependencies and multi‐level governance. In such a setting, decision‐ and strategy‐making is complex, with interrelated governance mechanisms between the private and public actors involved, and the risk of lack of a clear and sharp definition of public contents. In this article the authors are interested in understanding “if and how” multi‐level governance influences planning in home care and, more generally, social care fields. Through the analysis of home care services for the elderly in three prominent European countries, the article highlights critical dimensions that should be taken into consideration in such contexts: users' selection, services features, coordination and funding mechanisms, provision forms. These dimensions turn out to be representative of key processes of strategic development within multi‐level settings. (Edited publisher abstract)
Older people's views on how to finance increasing health-care costs
- Authors:
- WERNTOFT Elisabet, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 26(3), May 2006, pp.497-514.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
The aims of this paper are to investigate both older people's views about ways in which to finance health-care costs and their willingness to pay for treatment themselves, along with variations in these views by age and gender. The data are from the Good Ageing in Skåne (GAS) prospective longitudinal cohort study in Sweden, which involved medical examinations and a survey of living arrangements and socio-economic conditions. For the analysis reported in this paper, 930 GAS respondents aged 60–93 years were invited to participate in an additional structured interview, and 902 (97%) accepted. The sample was divided into the ‘young-old’ (aged 60–72 years), ‘old-old’ (78–84 years) and ‘oldest-old’ (87–93 years). It was found that the participants recommended increasing health-care funding by higher taxes and that they were willing to pay themselves for specific treatments, e.g. cosmetic surgery and medication to combat impotence and obesity. Many were also willing to pay privately for cataract surgery, to shorten the wait, although the respondent's financial circumstances associated with this willingness. Significantly more men than women, and of the ‘young-old’ than of the other two age groups, would pay for cataract surgery. The views of people aged 85 or more years differed from those of the young-old, e.g. significantly fewer believed that older people's health care received too little resource. Views about how to finance health care thus differed among the age groups and between men and women.
A comparative case study of care systems for frail elderly people: Germany, Spain, France, Italy, United Kingdom and Sweden
- Authors:
- LE BIHAN Blanche, MARTIN Claude
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Administration, 40(1), February 2006, pp.26-46.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Comparative studies of European social policies towards frail elderly people typically focus on the systems and their implementation. The study presented in this article, conducted in 2001 in six European countries (Germany, Spain, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Sweden) aims at comparing the rights of the individuals within the different care systems. The methodology used is a case study approach, which draws on a series of situations of dependent elderly people. The analysis focuses on the public authorities' responses – the care packages, which determine the type of care required and the financial contribution of the user – in each of the six countries, in relation to the concrete situations of frail elderly people. As local variations are important, in all the countries studied, local authorities have been chosen in each of the countries. This approach provides interesting concrete elements on the services and financial help which can be given to frail elderly people, and provides an understand of the national care systems organized in the different countries and the main difficulties encountered by public authorities in facing this problem of frail elderly people.
The shifting balance of long-term care in Sweden
- Authors:
- SUNDSTRÖM Gerdt, JOHANSSON Lennarth, HASSING Linda B.
- Journal article citation:
- Gerontologist, 42(3), June 2002, pp.350-355.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This study describes the Swedish debate on the role of family and state in care of elderly persons. It provides empirical evidence on the shifting balance of family, state, and market in the total panorama of elderly care. Total spending on aged adults has stagnated, and institutional care is shrinking in absolute and relative terms, but public home help for elders in the community is decreasing even more. Family members increasingly shoulder the bulk of care, but privately purchased care also seems to expand. This study calculates how public and informal care changed between 1994 and 2000: Informal care is estimated to have provided 60% of all care to elders in the community in 1994 and 70% in 2000. Implications: The results parallel a crisis of legitimacy of public elderly care in Sweden. They also call into question various metaphors used to describe patterns of care.
Is Swedish pension reform the right medicine for aging Europe?
- Author:
- PALMER Edward
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Aging and Social Policy, 14(1), 2002, pp.35-51.
- Publisher:
- Routledge
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
Following the Second World War, the idea of the life course with distinct periods of education, work, and retirement became popular as a result of the alliance of interests of unions and management, with politicians seizing the opportunity to accommodate them. These “social partners” implemented benefit rules and created practices for using old age and disability to ease the exit of older workers. Although justifiable at the time, now those rules and practices hinder individual and employer incentives to invest in human capital and work environments that enable older workers to remain in the workforce. The article argues that the workforce environment of the coming half-century, which is relevant for persons born around 2000, is much different from that a hundred years earlier, which determined the opportunities for people born around 1900. People are healthier and live much longer and work environments are friendlier. The article argues that it is no longer justifiable to subsidize exit from the workforce around the age of 60 for healthy workers, especially in view of the coming labour shortage in Europe.