Fact Sheet: Cohort Differences in Parents Illness and Nursing Home Use

Surviving parents of the war baby and baby boom cohorts are now reaching very old age. Given their increased longevity and postponement of morbidity into very old age (see Fact Sheets on parental mortality and care needs), it is essential to estimate whether and to what extent these parents will require informal or formal care. Such care is typically most burdensome and costly if it involves long-lasting illness prior to death. Furthermore, Medicare and especially Medicaid expenditures will depend on whether or not these parents require nursing home care. To obtain some estimates of the prevalence of long-lasting illness and nursing home care among these groups of parents, we investigated reports of parental illness preceding death and nursing home placement from four cohorts of adult children, using data from the Health and Retirement Study.

caregiver burden/caregiving/Medicaid/medicare/nursing home/Long Term Care/long-lasting illness

999999