Abstract
This paper analyses limitations in the quality of life of people in need of assistance or care. The focus of the analysis is the changes in satisfaction with life in general, health and household income before and after the onset of the need for assistance. There is a high risk of experiencing episodes of dependency on others in very old age. Those affected are mostly restricted in their mobility and, depending on the degree of their need for assistance, show low satisfaction levels. No evidence is found that people adapt to this unfavourable situation over time: neither life satisfaction nor health satisfaction returns to the former level. Health satisfaction begins to be affected at lower degrees of dependency than life satisfaction. On the other hand, the evaluation of the economic domain – indicated by satisfaction with household income – is not greatly affected by the need for personal assistance and care. The analysis is based on 27 waves of the German Socio Economic Panel Study.
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Notes
- 1.
The data used in this paper was extracted using the Add-On package PanelWhiz for Stata. PanelWhiz (http://www.PanelWhiz.eu) was written by Dr. John Haisken-DeNew (john@PanelWhiz.eu). See Haisken-DeNew and Hahn (2006) for details. The SOEPMENU-generated Do file to retrieve the SOEP data used here is available from the authors upon request. Any data or computational errors in this paper are our own.
- 2.
The higher the degree of need for personal assistance, the higher the probability of non-response in the subsequent panel waves.
- 3.
Significance level of all reported differences: p < 0.001.
- 4.
Weick (2012) analysed life satisfaction after the onset of the need for personal assistance and care on the basis of the waves of the GSOEP from 1992 to 2004, and also found a substantial decrease in life satisfaction with no linear effect of adaptation over time. The lead effect was controlled for 1 year. The analysis was not restricted to the first episode of the need for personal assistance and care, and the independent variables used were different.
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Weick, S. (2015). Subjective Well-Being After the Onset of the Need for Personal Assistance and Care. In: Maggino, F. (eds) A New Research Agenda for Improvements in Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 57. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15904-1_9
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