Access to care and support: impact of socio-economic status and ethnicity

This study examines to what extent socio-economic status and ethnicity affect the frailty (im)balance of community-dwelling older people in Brussels and in which degree they have access to care and support.
Data are derived from the Belgian Ageing Studies, a quantitative design that uses structured questionnaires to obtain information about different facets of quality of life of older adults (N=600). Analyses identified the relation between socioeconomic status, ethnicity on the one hand and frailty (im)balance and access to care and support on the other hand.
The findings reveal several socioeconomic and ethnic influences on different components of frailty: (1) physical domain (e.g. (a) older people with a lower socioeconomic status suffer earlier and more frequently from health problems and functional limitations; (b) older migrants experience more health issues then older natives); (2) psychological and social domain (e.g. in terms of elder abuse there is more neglect amidst natives and more financial abuse among the migrant population); (3) environmental domain (e.g. (a) wealthier neighborhoods in Brussels know a larger supply of care services; (b) there is a huge difference in adaptation of the housing situation of older migrants and natives: older migrants live much more often in a serious maladjusted home.).
Our results stress the need for a community-based approach to balance the state of frailty with respect to the different socioeconomic and ethnic groups within the population of older people in Brussels.