Nursing Home Use Expectations and Wealth Accumulation Among Older Adults

Long-term care represents a significant cost to older adults in the US, and nursing home use is an
important part of long-term care. It is therefore important to understand how older adults make
nursing home-related decisions. This study analyzes the determinants of older adults’ nursing
home use expectations, their relationship with actual nursing home use in the future, and the
association between nursing home use expectations and older adults’ decisions regarding wealth
accumulation. The findings indicate that older adults update their nursing home use expectations
rationally and their nursing home use expectations have strong predictive power for actual
nursing home use in the future, but these expectations are not statistically significantly associated
with wealth accumulation.