Improved housing accessibility for older people in Sweden and Germany : short term costs and long-term gains
- The physical housing environment is important to facilitate activities of daily living (ADL) for older people. A hindering environment may lead to ADL dependence and thus increase the need for home services, which is individually restricting and a growing societal burden. This study presents simulations of policy changes with regard to housing accessibility that estimates the potential impact specifically on instrumental activities of daily living (I-ADL), usage of home services, and related costs. The models integrate empirical data to test the hypothesis that a policy providing funding to remove the five most severe environmental barriers in the homes of older people who are at risk of developing dependence in I-ADL, can maintain independence and reduce the need for home services. In addition to official statistics from state agencies in Sweden and Germany, we utilized published results from the ENABLE-AGE and other scientific studies to generate the simulations. The simulations predicted that new policies that remove potentially hindering housing features would improve I-ADL performance among older people and reduce the need for home services. Our findings suggest that a policy change can contribute to positive effects with regard to I-ADL independence among older people and to a reduction of societal burden.
Author: | Björn SlaugORCiDGND, Carlos Chiatti, Frank OswaldORCiDGND, Roman Kaspar, Steven M. Schmidt |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-447397 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14090964 |
ISSN: | 1660-4601 |
ISSN: | 1661-7827 |
Pubmed Id: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28846592 |
Parent Title (English): | International journal of environmental research and public health |
Publisher: | MDPI AG |
Place of publication: | Basel |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of Completion: | 2017 |
Date of first Publication: | 2017/08/26 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2018/01/04 |
Tag: | ADL; ageing society; environmental barriers; housing adaptations; simulations |
Volume: | 14 |
Issue: | 9, Art. 964 |
Page Number: | 13 |
First Page: | 1 |
Last Page: | 13 |
Note: | © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
HeBIS-PPN: | 427954568 |
Institutes: | Erziehungswissenschaften / Erziehungswissenschaften |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 36 Soziale Probleme, Sozialdienste / 360 Soziale Probleme und Sozialdienste; Verbände |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0 |