Long-term care determinants in Türkiye: Analyzing a comprehensive range of variables

Abstract

By 2050, one in ten people in OECD countries will be 80 aged or older. The aging population will have several impacts on countries, such as increased demand for healthcare and social services, a smaller workforce, and a growing dependency ratio. Türkiye relies heavily on family members to provide long-term care (LTC) for their elderly. In this paper, we study the relationship between a comprehensive range of demographic and socioeconomic variables and informal long-term caregiving using the Turkish Statistical Institute’s Time Use Survey, a nationally representative micro dataset. Employing a multivariate regression analysis, we find that women are more likely to provide unpaid informal caregiving, albeit lacking strong statistical significance. The findings also reveal that being married and older are significant predictors of providing informal LTC. In contrast, we find no significant evidence that income level and house characteristics are crucial determinants of informal LTC. The findings of this study have a number of important policy implications for future practice, such as investing in healthcare and social services and developing policies to encourage LTC workforce participation.