The Decision of Elderly Persons to Leave Their Homes

Abstract

A fundamental assumption of home care and homemaker programs is that elderly persons with functional impairments will require institutionalization if support services are not provided at home. Data collected on three random samples of francophone urban elderly are used to test this assumption. Results show that housing conditions, cohabitation with children, and sickness explain part of the variance of the wishes of elderly persons to leave home whereas functional impairment is not related to them.