Long-Term Care for the Elderly Worldwide: Whose Responsibility is It?

As human longevity increases, with people living well into their seventies and eighties, the need for long-term care for the elderly most certainly will grow. The longer people live, the more likely they fall prey to chronic disease(s), as well as to the standard toll the aging process takes on human bodies and psyches. In this article, I examine some of the concerns that a wide variety of governments, individuals, and families have expressed about meeting the long-term care needs of large numbers of people over sixty-five. I then claim that each of these groups must do its share of long-term care for the elderly, depending on its ability to do so. Finally, I conclude that the more committed a country is to the deconstruction of ingrained notions about who should care (women) and who should work (men) (Belkin 2008), the more able it will be to meet the long-term care needs of the elderly and other vulnerable populations fairly.