Life satisfaction and choice of housing : Impact of staying at home instead of nursing homes

Abstract

Our study explores the causal relationship between residing in nursing homes (NH) and life satisfaction among the elderly. In the first place, we wrote a literature review to study the existing literature. We have a statement on the ageing of the population, an overview of the long-term care service, an overview of the drivers of NH entries and finally we study the existing literature about life satisfaction. Using Share data to gather information about individuals, we did some descrip- tive statistics to have a better understanding of the set. Using both Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) methods, our analysis addressed a gap in the literature, often finding contrasting results to previous studies like that of B ̈ockerman (2012). We discovered that the effect of being in NH on life satisfaction tends to be stronger for males, individuals between 65 and 74 (in contrast to the 75+), individ- uals with a partner and people with children