Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore 259772, Singapore.
Lloyds Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117602, Singapore.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Jul 9;17(14):4950. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17144950.
Against a rapidly aging population, projections are done to size up the demand for long-term care (LTC) services for long-range policy planning. These projections are typically focused on functional factors such as disability. Recent studies indicate the importance of social factors, for example, socially isolated seniors living alone are more likely to be institutionalized, resulting in higher demand for LTC services. This is one the first known studies to complete a 40-year projection of LTC demand based on disability and social isolation. The primary micro dataset was the Retirement and Health Survey, Singapore's first nationally representative longitudinal study of noninstitutionalized older adults aged 45 to 85 with over 15,000 respondents. Disability prevalence across the mild to severe spectrum is projected to increase five-fold over the next 40 years, and the number of socially isolated elders living alone is projected to grow four-fold. Regression models of living arrangements revealed interesting ethnic differences: Malay elders are 2.6 times less likely to live alone than their Chinese counterparts, controlling for marital status, age, and housing type. These projections provide a glimpse of the growing demand for LTC services for a rapidly aging Singapore and underscore the need to shore up community-based resources to enable seniors to age-in-place.
面对人口快速老龄化，人们对长期护理 (LTC) 服务的需求进行预测，以便为长期政策规划做好准备。这些预测通常侧重于残疾等功能因素。最近的研究表明社会因素的重要性，例如，独居的社交孤立的老年人更有可能被机构收容，从而导致对 LTC 服务的需求增加。这是第一个已知的基于残疾和社会隔离完成 LTC 需求 40 年预测的研究之一。主要的微观数据集是退休和健康调查，这是新加坡对 45 至 85 岁非机构化老年人进行的首次全国代表性纵向研究，调查对象超过 15000 人。未来 40 年，轻度至重度残疾的流行率预计将增加五倍，独居的社交孤立老年人的数量预计将增加四倍。生活安排的回归模型揭示了有趣的族裔差异：在控制婚姻状况、年龄和住房类型的情况下，马来族老年人独居的可能性比华人老年人低 2.6 倍。这些预测让我们对新加坡快速老龄化所带来的日益增长的长期护理服务需求有了初步了解，并强调需要加强基于社区的资源，以使老年人能够在家中安享晚年。
