Excluding Institutionalized Elderly from Surveys: Consequences for Income and Poverty Statistics

Autor/inn/en	Peeters, Hans; Debels, Annelies; Verpoorten, Rika
Titel	Excluding Institutionalized Elderly from Surveys: Consequences for Income and Poverty Statistics
Quelle	In: Social Indicators Research, 110 (2013) 2, S.751-769 (19 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0303-8300
DOI	10.1007/s11205-011-9957-8
Schlagwörter	Older Adults; Foreign Countries; Statistical Data; Income; Data Collection; Labor Market; Poverty; Social Indicators; Nursing Homes; Validity; Retirement Benefits; Belgium + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Älterer Erwachsener; Ausland; Einkommen; Data capture; Datensammlung; Labour market; Arbeitsmarkt; Armut; Social indicator; Sozialer Indikator; Sonderheim; Gültigkeit; Retirement pay; Ruhegehalt; Belgien
Abstract	Growing life expectancy and changes in financial, marriage and labour markets have placed the income position of the elderly at the center of scientific and political discourse. As a consequence, the last decades witnessed the publication of various influential reports that contained comparative statistics on old age income inequalities on the basis of international surveys. Common to these surveys is that they exclude the elderly who live in institutions. The divergence between the target population (e.g. the population aged 65 and over) and the survey population (e.g. the noninstitutionalized population aged 65 and over) that thus arises, might lead to important bias in the survey results. However, hardly any research has been conducted quantifying the direction and strength of this bias. This article tries to fill this gap and assesses the consequences of excluding the institutionalized elderly for the validity and international comparability of a number of indicators. Analyses with the Belgian Datawarehouse Labour Market and Social Protection show that the resulting bias is negligible for average equivalent pension income, but that assistance dependency among pensioners is underestimated by 10%. Furthermore, on the basis of international statistics, it is shown that the share of elderly in institutions varies substantially across countries. It is argued how this jeopardizes the international comparability of old age statistics. Finally, the article opens up a discussion on the meaning of lack of income and wealth among institutionalized elderly. It concludes that depending on how this question is answered, poverty will be under- or overestimated in countries with a high share of institutionalized elderly. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10