Socioeconomic differences in the prevalence in public long-term care among the German elderly

In a view of recent and future demographic changes, the provision of long-term care for the elderly becomes increasingly challenging. The development of the policies and programs attempting to offer the cost-effective care requires a sufficient amount of information not only on the macro but also on the individual level. Utilizing the German Micro Census data, the paper estimates the association between the individual’s socioeconomic status (by means of education) and the prevalence in public long-term care (PLTC) among people aged 65 years and above. These are the only data allowing studying this association. Particular attention is paid to the disparities between men and women and between the residents from East/West Germany. Being assigned to one of the three care levels (‘Pflegestufe’) is considered as a proxy for LTC utilization, the eligibility to which depends on the physical evaluation of the applicants. The logit regression model is applied to study the direction and the strength of the relationship. The preliminary results reveal the lower prevalence in care for people with higher education but they are found to be in need of more extensive care. The regression results show that education certainly matters for prevalence in LTC.