Unmet Needs for Care and Support for the Elderly in Nigeria

The study is focused on understanding the broad issues of care and support of the elderly with a view to explaining factors influencing the gaps in their expectations and experiences. This is an empirical attempt with a view to understanding and underscoring the importance and limitation of the domains of support from core family members (spouses and children) within the available support networks for the elderly. The study utilized primary dataset including quantitative and qualitative data collected in Ijesa communities in South-west, Nigeria. The findings showed that children and spouses ranked highest among sources of support networks rated by the elderly for five patterns of support identified. Logistic regression results showed that individual variables including age, education, family of orientation, and living in same town with children to a large extent determine level of unmet need for support. The study concluded that personal attributes rather than other social variables are important determinants of high level of unmet need for elderly

Emotional support · Family support · Logistic regression · Social support · Global Health Care Issues · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Medicine · Psychology · Gerontology · Social Psychology