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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Balancing family and state care: neither, either or both?
— the case of Sweden | | Author(s) | Gerdt Sundström, Bo Malmberg, Lennarth Johansson |
| Corporate Author | Family Support for Older People: Determinants and Consequences (FAMSUP) Network, European Science Foundation |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 26, part 5, September 2006 |
| Pages | pp 745-766 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jid_ASO |
| Keywords | Family care ; Services ; Domiciliary services ; Social welfare ; Social surveys ; Sweden ; Conference proceedings ; Europe. |
| Annotation | Old-age care has frequently been conceptualised as being either family-based or publicly-provided. This article analyses the overlap in provision from the two sources and their relationship in the Swedish welfare state. The empirical evidence on patterns of use in Sweden supports a joint family-state conceptualisation of care: many older people and their carers prefer to rely on both sources of care rather than just one. However, this may depend on general coverage rates of public services and the efficient targeting of frail older people who live alone. Most older people in need of care rely on help only from their family, but many are helped by both the family and the state, particularly those with the greatest needs. Dynamic concepts like 'substitution' and 'complementarity' are hard to apply in cross-sectional studies: there may be complementarity in individual cases, but long-term substitution or its reversal in successive cohorts. The need for care varies considerably among Swedish municipalities, with implications for the levels of both public services and family support. High coverage rates of the public services may facilitate and support family care. This is the last of four empirical studies in this issue of Ageing and Society on the provision of family support to older people, written by members of the Family Support for Older People: Determinants and Consequences (FAMSUP) Network, European Science Foundation (ESF). (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-060816006 A |
| Classmark | P6:SJ: I: N: TY: 3F: 76P: 6M: 74 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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