Socioeconomic status, cultural values, and elderly care: An examination of elderly care preference in OECD countries

Background

With the rapid growing of the older population around the world, care for older adults is becoming a pressing public health issue. To find the optimum and sustainable balance of informal and formal involvement in senior care is urgently important. However, it is still unclear how older adults’ preferences for senior care are shaped by a range of factors at individual and country levels. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the roles of socioeconomic status (SES) and culture values in old adults’ attitude toward senior care.

Methods

The data from the International Social Survey Program 2012: Changing Family and Gender Roles were used to construct multilevel mixed-effect logistic regression models, in which the associations between individual-level and country-level factors and their interactions on senior care preference were estimated.

Results

SES indictors, family income and education level, were positively and inversely associated with older adults’ preference for family senior care, respectively. Moreover, there was an interactive effect of the individual-level factors and secular-rational values on senior care preference.

Conclusions

Family care is less likely to be preferred by older adults from societies that stress individual independence than those that highly value tight-knit family relationships. However, the cultural gap in the family care preference shrinks at a faster speed as older adults’ family income increase.