Disability

This booklet of long-term care and disability research has been prepared by the Division of Long-Term Care and Aging Policy, Office of Family, Community and Long-Term Care Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. It summarizes the results of the Division's research projects from 1989 through the present and highlights future plans.

The 1982 and 1984 National Long-Term Care Surveys (NLTCS) are household surveys of functionally impaired Medicare beneficiaries age 65+. The 1989 NTLCS is a resurveying of this population.

The repeal of many provisions of the 1988 Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act was due to subjective impressions about the usefulness to many elderly persons of the services covered by the law and to the omission of long-term care services.

This paper was requested as part of the National Academy of Sciences, Committee on National Statistics Panel to Evaluate the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). SIPP is sponsored by the Bureau of the Census and has been an ongoing longitudinal survey of the civilian non-institutionalized population since 1983.

This study was designed to provide comprehensive information about future long-term care needs in the U.S. Using data from the U.S. Decennial Census of Population and Housing, National Long-Term Care Survey and National Nursing Home Survey, the study developed detailed projections of the need for long-term care among the elderly in the years 2000, 2020 and 2040.

This report examines how many disabled elderly are at risk because they do not receive the assistance they need in basic self-maintenance activities. The source of data was the 1982 and 1984 National Long-Term Care Surveys.

Physical impairments are commonly believed to require relatively more active hands-on assistance with the activities of daily living (ADLs) while cognitive impairments use relatively more supervisory or standby assistance.

This paper looks at programmatic definitions of disability for federal disability programs by: (1) reviewing and examining major programmatic definitions of disability, and (2) describing complex eligibility processes by using the Social Security Disability Insurance program as an example.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the variability in estimates of disability in the U.S. elderly population as a function of differing definitions of physical disability and cognitive impairment.

This paper compares the health characteristics (health status, health insurance coverage, use of physician and hospital care, and cost of care) of persons with and without disabilities. Three separate analyses are included: one on children, one on working age adults (aged 18-64), and one on the elderly. Various levels of functional disability are also examined.