INSEE points to the growing number of seniors with loss of autonomy and the too low number of places in nursing homes.
While France had 2.5 million dependent seniors in 2015, it could identify 4 million in 2050 “if demographic trends and the improvement in the state of health continued”. An increase of 60% in 35 years.
This is what INSEE estimates in a study published Thursday, July 25. According to the National Institute of Statistics, this increase in seniors with a loss of autonomy “would be due to the arrival of baby boomers at old ages.” The improvement in the average state of health at each age would not compensate for the structural effect of the arrival at the great ages of baby boomers”, continue the authors of the study. According to their projections, seniors in loss of autonomy would represent 16.4% of people aged 60 and over in 2050, i.e. 1% more than in 2015.
For INSEE, an individual is considered to be losing their autonomy when they are no longer able to move around, dress, wash themselves or if they are forced to hold the bed or the armchair.
The INSEE study also shows the existence of strong disparities between regions. Thus, the prevalence rates of loss of autonomy would increase sharply in the overseas departments and in the south-east of France, due to the effects of demographic structure, while they would remain stable in the Hauts-de-Seine or in the Creuse.
A significant lack of places in nursing homes
The increase in the number of dependent people in the years to come will be a challenge: how to provide them with the necessary care and open a sufficient number of places in health establishments?
Indeed, among the 2.5 million people losing their autonomy in 2015, only 22% lived in nursing homes. In its projection, INSEE estimates that the distribution of care between home and care establishment will not vary. “In the future, considering that the distribution of care between home and establishment would remain the same for a given age and degree of loss of autonomy in the departments, the number of people permanently housed in an establishment, which is about 600,000 in 2015, would increase by 0.8% per year on average until 2021, then between 1.5% and 2.0% per year from 2023 to 2040. It would exceed 700,000 in 2030, i.e. +20%, and would rise to 900,000 in 2045, i.e. an increase of more than 50% between 2015 and 2045”, write the authors of the study.
According to them, France will therefore have to choose “between massively opening places in EHPADs and modifying the sharing of care between home and establishment, a development which would meet the stated objective of public policies to promote home care”.
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