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Living conditions as predictor of elderly residential satisfaction. A cross-European view by poverty status

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Abstract

Although there is an extensive body of literature on the use of residential satisfaction to measure the impact of housing conditions on well-being in later life, less is known about differences and similarities between sub-populations and national contexts. By means of a cross-European analysis (EU15), this study aims to examine how objective and subjective factors of living conditions shape the perceptions of older Europeans about the adequacy of their residential environment. Two patterns of housing quality are explored: (1) international heterogeneity of the EU15 countries, and (2) intra-national heterogeneity, where we distinguish between households at risk of poverty and those not at risk in the elderly population of these countries. Data were drawn from the 2007 wave of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey, providing a sample of more than 58,000 individuals aged 65 years and older. The housing characteristics surveyed were reduced using tetrachoric correlations in a principal component analysis. The resulting predictors, as well as control variables (including gender, age, health status and tenure), are assessed using multiple linear regression analysis to explore their association with a high or low level of residential satisfaction. Despite a generally positive assessment by older Europeans of their living space, major geographic and household income differences existed in the factors that explained residential satisfaction. Identifying factors associated with residential satisfaction in different household income groups and national contexts may facilitate the development of EU policies that attempt to make ‘ageing in place’ a viable and suitable option for older Europeans.

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Notes

  1. Ageing in Place is a mainstream policy guideline of the EU in relation to the housing and care of older people. It seeks to preserve and extend as long as possible the conditions that allow older individuals to remain in their own home as an alternative to nursing residences (Sixsmith and Sixsmith 2008).

  2. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the UK.

  3. http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/europe-2020-in-a-nutshell/index_en.htm.

  4. European Union Survey on Income and Life Conditions. More info about: EU-SILC survey: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/microdata/european_union_statistics_on_income_and_living_conditions.

  5. Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden employ simple random sampling methods. More info about the sampling procedures: https://circabc.europa.eu/sd/a/d7e88330-3502-44fa-96ea-eab5579b4d1e/SILC065%20operation%202013%20VERSION%20MAY%202013.pdf.

  6. For more detailed information about the Eurostat treatment to avoid non-response errors see: Verma et al (2010).

  7. Marans and Rodgers (1975) established two environmental levels: ‘macro-neighbourhood’, the administrative division of urban environments, and ‘micro-neighbourhoods’, small groups of dwellings that conform a familiar space to their inhabitants.

  8. The scale items were appropriate for PCA as the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) criteria of sampling adequacy, calculated before factor extraction, presented a value of 0.806.

  9. Although age had two noticeable exceptions (Belgium and the Netherlands, where residential satisfaction increases with age among older elderly at risk of poverty), overall our results did not substantiate the positive association between age and residential satisfaction found in previous studies (Piquart and Burmedi 2003). However, it should be noted that we did not report on more precise age patterns in elderly residential satisfaction due to the limited sample size for the at risk of poverty sub-sample aged 80+ in half of the countries. It is nevertheless noteworthy to highlight the most important (although tentative) findings of the outcomes regarding the 80+ for all countries combined: (1) higher levels of residential satisfaction compared with population aged 65–79; and (2) indoor dwelling conditions (basic facilities and maintenance) are better predictors of residential satisfaction of the poor oldest-old than the characteristics of the outdoor space. Finally, it is worth to remember that results for ages 65–79 are close to those of the whole sample.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is a revised version of Chapter 5 of Fernandez-Carro’s (2013) PhD thesis “Ageing in Place in Europe: a multidimensional approach to independent living in later life”. Financial support for this research came from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness: Dr Módenes and Dr. Fernández-Carro under the R + D + i project “Re-defining the population-housing linkage in a crisis context. A cross-European view” (CSO2010-17133), Dr. Módenes under the R + D + i project “Geographical mobility and housing: Spain in an international perspective” (CSO2013-45358-R) and Dr Spijker under the “Ramón y Cajal” programme (RYC-2013-14851).

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  1. Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

    Celia Fernández-Carro, Juan Antonio Módenes & Jeroen Spijker

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  1. Celia Fernández-Carro
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Correspondence to Celia Fernández-Carro.

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Fernández-Carro, C., Módenes, J.A. & Spijker, J. Living conditions as predictor of elderly residential satisfaction. A cross-European view by poverty status. Eur J Ageing 12, 187–202 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-015-0338-z

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