THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NON-FAMILY ELDERLY CARE OPTIONS AND ECONOMIC STRUCTURE: THE CASE OF TURKEY

Abstract

The traditional extended family, which has been dominant for thousands of years, was the largest self-protection institution for its elderly members. With industrialization and urbanization, the traditional extended family has been replaced by the nuclear family. This has led to a weakening of the traditional function of the family in providing care in old age and its replacement by professional elderly care service institutions such as nursing homes and hospices. This study focuses on testing the relationship between the modernization of the economic structure and the increase in non-family care options for elderly care. The correlation between economic indicators and provincial ranking in topic and term search trends was test with the data obtained from Google trends. Spearman and Kendall rank correlation analyses were used. The findings show that, in general, search trends for elderly care and social services are decreasing in provinces where agriculture is dominant, while these searches are increasing as the modern economy, represented by non-agricultural activities, becomes dominant. It also shows that the inadequacy in public service provision is negatively correlated with the increase in the trend of elderly care and social service seeking. Again, there is a statistically significant and negative correlation between the increase in GDP per capita and the trend in the search for elderly care and social services. In term-based searches, it is seen that the findings in the subject-based searches are not supported in nursing home and nursing home searches. Among the components of GDP by branches of activity other than agriculture, forestry and fishing, there is a negative correlation between the search trend for the terms nursing home and care home and a positive correlation with public services. This suggests that, in terms of elderly care in Turkish society, families are not very willing to entrust their elderly parents to institutions such as nursing homes and care homes, that they are forced to do so as the income level decreases, and that institutional care tends to increase in places where the state's public services are intensive. However, despite the reluctance to direct elderly care to non-family institutions, there is also a structure in which there are many support options for elderly care support, including financial payments and disability benefits. Here, the correlation findings between elderly care and social service screenings and economic structure under this topic support that, in general, families demand support in providing care for their elderly parents, while the tendency to leave them in institutional care remains weak. Of course, the limitations of the study are limited to two topics and two term trends, and there is a need for further studies questioning various aspects of this issue. The preliminary findings of the study, which was conducted from the perspective of providing evidence from the Turkish society on the subject, also constitute a limitation of the study.