The Size and Characteristics of the Residential Care Population: Evidence from Three National Surveys

This report is the second of two prepared as part of a project to better understand the size and characteristics of the long-term care population in all settings. Identified were three recently federally supported surveys — the 2002 Health and Retirement Survey, the 2002 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey Cost and Use file, and the National Long-Term Care Survey — as being best suited for the purpose because of their focus on the older population and data elements that allow identification of residential care alternatives by name, services available, or both. In this report, the authors report on their analysis of these surveys and discuss the implications of our findings for improving collection of data on residential settings.