Health services research
-
Health services research · Apr 2002
Estimating paid and unpaid hours of personal assistance services in activities of daily living provided to adults living at home.
To estimate the total hours of paid and unpaid personal assistance of daily living provided to adults living at home in the United States using nationally representative household survey data. ⋯ Personal assistance provided to adults with disabilities amounts to 21.5 billion hours of help per year, with an economic value in 1996 approaching $200 billion. Only 16 percent of this total is paid, representing $32 billion in home health services spent annually. This study, the first to estimate hours of assistance for both working-age and older adults, documents that older persons are more likely to receive paid personal assistance, while working-age people rely to a greater extent on unpaid help. This study begins to articulate the division of labor in the provision of personal assistance. Estimates of paid and unpaid hours of help by number of ADLs should inform policy concerning eligibility boundaries in long term care.