The Elderly Population with Chronic Functional Disability: Implications for Home Care Eligibility

This paper assesses the effect of changes in the minimum number of activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) limitations, type of help, and duration of disability required on the size of the population potentially eligible for home care benefits. Only 411,000 elders meet very restrictive disability criteria, whereas over 4 million would be eligible under expansive criteria. The selection of disability criteria has important implications not only for the size of the eligible population but also for which groups qualify for benefits and which are excluded.