Disability and Residential Mobility among the Elderly: Changes from the Eighties to the Nineties

Gilbert Brenes, University of Wisconsin at Madison and Central American Center for Population

In 1991, Speare, Avery and Lawton showed that, during the eighties among the American elderly, disability triggered residential mobility, institutionalization, and the need for living in a more complex living arrangement. The loss of ability over time was an even a better predictor for the latter two situations. The United States has experienced a decrease in disability prevalence and an increase in the mean age of disabled people. The aim of this paper is to analyze whether the impact of disability on residential mobility and institutionalization changed during the last decades of the 20th century. It compares residential mobility, institutionalization, and living arrangements among people 70 years old or older in 1984 (LSOA I ) with people of the same age in 1994 (LSOA II). The evidence shows that disability at the baseline has a stronger effect on residential mobility and on living with others during the 1990s than during the 1980s.