The Impact of Educational Attainment and Income on Long-Term Care for Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias: A Swedish Nationwide Study

BACKGROUND: Long-term care improves independence and quality of life of persons with dementia (PWD). The influence of socioeconomic status on access to long-term care was understudied. OBJECTIVE: To explore the socioeconomic disparity in long-term care for PWD. METHODS: This registry-based study included 14,786 PWD, registered in the Swedish registry for cognitive and dementia disorders (2014–2016). Education and income, two traditional socioeconomic indicators, were the main exposure. Outcomes were any kind of long-term care, specific types of long-term care (home care, institutional care), and the monthly average hours of home care. The association between outcomes and socioeconomic status was examined with zero-inflated negative binomial regression and binary logistic regression. RESULTS: PWD with compulsory education had lower likelihood of receiving any kind of long-term care (OR 0.80, 95% CI 0.68–0.93), or home care (OR 0.83, 95% CI 0.70–0.97), compared to individuals with university degrees. Their monthly average hours of home care were 0.70 times (95% CI 0.59–0.82) lower than those of persons with university degrees. There was no significant association between education and the receipt of institutional care. Stratifying on persons with Alzheimer’s disease showed significant association between lower education and any kind of long-term care, and between income and the hours of home care. CONCLUSIONS: Socioeconomic inequalities in long-term care existed in this study population. Lower-educated PWD were less likely to acquire general long-term care, home care and had lower hours of home care, compared to their higher-educated counterparts. Income was not significantly associated with the receipt of long-term care.