Socioeconomic Inequity in Access to Medical and Long-Term Care Among Older People

Table 2 Pooled descriptive statistics, Wave 6 (2002) to Wave 10 (2021)

Stats	% or mean	Standard deviation		%
Certified for long-term care use	38.0%		Residential area (Geographic region of Japan)
Standardised long-term care use	0.38	0.44	Hokkaido	3.6%
Years of education	9.28	2.58	Tohoku	10.1%
Couple’s income (10,000JPY)	175.21	152.43	Kanto	18.8%
Age	80.80	6.28	Hokuriku	7.1%
Women	72.6%		Tozan	6.9%
Employment status: Working	5.1%		Tokai	8.0%
SRH: Very good	11.5%		Kinki	13.2%
SRH: Good	39.8%		Chugoku	9.7%
SRH: Fair	35.6%		Shikoku	4.3%
SRH: Bad	11.1%		Kyushu	18.3%
SRH: Very bad	2.0%		Municipal/population category: Government-designated	13.0%
N of chronic conditions	2.02	0.99	Population size: 200 K+	20.0%
ADL score (0–24)	2.77	3.87	Population size: 100–200 K	16.4%
IADL score (0–16)	4.79	4.22	Population size: < 100 K	28.1%
Memory test (0–9)	1.89	1.71	Population size: Town and villages	22.5%
N of household members	1.94	1.69
Marital status: Single	55.1%

Note: SRH stands for self-rated health; ADL stands for activities of daily living; IADL stands for instrumental activities of daily living; government-designated cities have populations greater than 500,000 and have been designated by the Cabinet of Japan; these descriptive statistics are calculated for 1,775 respondents with long-term care needs (i.e. ADL or IADL limitations), weighted by both cross-sectional and longitudinal weights; couples’ income is equivalised by the marital status and residualised by employment status, and the sample size is 1,375; individuals whose marital status is single include those divorced and widowed

ISSN: 1475-9276