Only one-fifth of 65-year-old Americans won’t need long-term care services. Everyone else can expect to require some level of it — and about a quarter of these retirees will have “severe needs” for this assistance, a recent study found.
Long-term care assists individuals in “activities of daily living,” which include bathing and eating, and in some cases, grocery shopping and cooking. For some people, this care is administered at home, while others may have to go to a nursing home or assisted living facility.
About 38% of older Americans will experience “moderate needs” and 22% will have “minimal needs” for long-term care services, the Center for Retirement Research report found. The researchers sifted through two decades of data from the Health and Retirement Study, and took into account the intensity and duration of these long-term care needs.
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