Formal care refers to any professional or paid services provided in the care recipient’s home due to a physical, mental, emotional or memory problem. This can include help with personal care (e.g. dressing, bathing), help with domestic tasks (e.g. cleaning, ironing), meals-on-wheels or help with other activities (e.g. preparing prescribed medication).
Question in SHARE (click to view):
During the last twelve months, did you receive in your own home any professional or paid services due to a physical, mental, emotional or memory problem?
How to use the graph (click to view)
To view trends in formal home care use for community-dwelling adults aged 65+ years, first select the level of disaggregation from the tabs below. To select the regions and trends to compare, either click the check-boxes below the graph or click on the groups in the legend to the right of the graph. Use your mouse and hover over the point of interest on the graph to view the figures for prevalence rates. Hovering over the graph will also activate the modebar in the top right corner of the graph, where the graphs can be downloaded, zoomed in/out, and more. The graphs are free to download using the camera icon in the top right corner of the graph, proper citation is required if used. See the notes below the graph for further details on the data used as well as how to cite the graph.

Income and wealth are categorized as those in the bottom two quintiles (i.e. up to the 40th percentile of the income/wealth distribution) versus the top three quintiles (i.e. all those above the 40th percentile). Income is measured as net household income aggregated from all income components in SHARE and wealth is measured as household net worth. For ranking in the income/wealth distribution, income and wealth are equivalized according to the OECD scale.

Formal care receiving by gender
Formal care receiving by gender and income
Formal care receiving by gender and wealth
 

Data selection

Click the checkboxes below to select the trends for each graph.

  Northern Continental Southern Total
Women
Men

Data selection

Click the checkboxes below to select the trends for each graph.

  Northern Continental Southern Total
Women < 40th percentile
Women > 40th percentile
Men < 40th percentile
Men > 40th percentile

Data selection

Click the checkboxes below to select the trends for each graph.

  Northern Continental Southern Total
Women < 40th percentile
Women > 40th percentile
Men < 40th percentile
Men > 40th percentile

Notes: Own calculations based on SHARE data release 7.0.0. Caution should be taken when interpreting changes in prevalence between points as the x-axis is not to scale. Actual data on formal home care for *wave 3 (2008/09, SHARELIFE) and **wave 4 (2011/12) are not available. As a result, these data points are averaged between waves 2 (2006/07) and 5 (2013). Data for wave 7 (2017, SHARELIFE) on formal home care are available by gender, but not by income and wealth. No data is available for the Eastern cluster for formal care. Sample sizes of countries should be considered when interpreting trends for total women and men. Sample sizes by region are as follows: Total (n=105,421); Northern (n=22,777): Sweden (n=9,700), Netherlands (n=7,940), Denmark (n=5,137); Continental (n=44,289): Austria (n=2,067), Germany (n=22,679), France (n=15,563), Switzerland (n=1,327), Belgium (n=2,653); Southern (n=24,646): Spain (n=9,760), Italy (n=14,886). The following data points should be interpreted with caution due to small sample sizes: men with income below the 40th percentile in the Southern region for wave 1 (2004/05) and wave 2 (2006/07); men with wealth below the 40th percentile in the Southern region for wave 1 (2004/05). For further inquiries concerning the data, please contact us at futuregen@euro.centre.org.

To cite the graphs, please use the following citation, substituting the title of the graph and access date as appropriate:
FutureGen Data Navigator (2021). Prevalence of formal home care by gender (Aged 65+ years). Based on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Accessed [insert date here] from https://futuregen.euro.centre.org/data-navigator/