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and respondents (14 thousand of males and above 16 thousand of females). is paper is structured as follows. First, the results of the analysis of the health status of older people as a determinant of care needs will be described. Next, the outcomes of the analysis of receiving informal and formal care among older individuals will be presented. The sub- sequent section presents the estimates of the volume of unmet care needs among older people in the analysed countries. e paper ends with conclusions.
health status of olDer people in europe
As health status is the key determinant of demand for care services, rst the results of the analysis of health conditions among people aged 65 years and more in the considered European countries will be presented. e analysis was based on the following variables describing health status: self-rated health, the extent of limitations to usual activities lasting at least six months, the number of limitations in activities of daily living (ADL) and the number of limitations in instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Generally speaking, the health status of older adults di ers signi cantly among the analysed countries with two broad groups of countries: Western and Northern European countries, on one hand, and Southern, Central and Eastern ones, on the other. Figure 1 presents the structure of older men and women by subjective health status. Older people in Denmark (both men and women) reported their health as very good or excellent the most o en (about 50 percent), while the lowest share was found for Estonia, Portugal and Poland (about 3–4%). moreo- ver, the percentage of older adults assessing their health as poor was the highest in Poland, Croatia, Estonia and Portugal, while it was the lowest in Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark. It should be underlined that in almost all the analysed countries women repor- ted their health status as poor or fair more o en than men did.
A similar picture may be drawn from the analysis of other variables describing health status with a slightly di erent patterns for older men and women. For example, only one third of females aged 65 years and more in Poland, Estonia, Croatia and Portugal had no long-standing limitations in usual activities in comparison to more than half of them in Spain, Denmark, Greece and Switzerland (Figure 2). Again, the highest proportion of ol- der women with serious limitations in usual activities was observed for Poland, Estonia, Croatia and Portugal (20% and more) and the lowest – in Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden and Austria (about 5% and less). As previously stated, older men had limitations in usual activities less o en than older females, which may be explained by the di erences in the age structure between those populations resulting from the higher life expectancy for women than for men.
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