Diverse Care Networks and Unmet Care Needs of Older Adults

• In Event: 3560 - Social Integration and Aging

Abstract

Despite growing public concerns about “America is running out of family caregivers” and interests in other alternatives beyond spouse and adult children, limited research attention has been directed toward the provision of care by an increasingly diverse care networks. This proposed study tries to fill this important gap by examining the complexity and stratification in care networks of older adults from the life course perspective. There are three general goals in this study: first, to develop a care network typology that captures the multidimensionality of care networks with a combination of different types of care, second, to explore the stratification in care networks by the intersection of race, gender, and SES, and third, to examine how different compositions of care networks are associated with unmet care needs of older adults. This study is based on a longitudinal sample of older adults (ages 65+) from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS, 2011-2017). Latent class analysis (LCA) will be applied to identify distinguishable care networks, and a series of binary and multivariate analysis will be conducted to explore heterogeneities in care networks and the association between care network types and unmet care needs.

Author

• Zhiyong Lin, University of Maryland, College Park