What Level of Long-Term Services and Supports Do Retirees Need?

For late-career workers and retirees, the possibility of needing care later in life is a real concern. This concern may reflect media reports of the high likelihood of infirmity and the high cost of care – particularly in nursing homes. It is easy for people to jump to the conclusion that most retirees will either need to trade in their nest egg and independence to get support in a nursing home or languish in their homes with unmet needs. Fear of dependency may make retirees reluctant to spend their 401(k) balances, depriving themselves of necessities as they age. The narrative that emerges from the academic literature, however, is more nuanced. Many people will experience only brief periods of needing care, and the burden in terms of the money spent on formal caregivers or the time spent by informal caregivers will be minimal. The goal of this three-part series of briefs is to help retirees, their families, and policymakers better understand the likelihood that 65-year-olds – over the course of their retirement – will experience disability that seems manageable, catastrophic, or somewhere in-between. This initial brief begins by describing the risk of needing different levels of support during retirement. The second brief will examine the caregivers and financial resources available to provide such assistance, and the final brief will consider both the risk of needing support and the resources available, in order to identify people who are most at risk of facing unmet needs. The discussion in this brief proceeds as follows. The first section introduces the analysis. The second section explains the methodology, including how we measure and classify support needs. The third section describes the results: about one-fifth of retirees will need no support and one-quarter are likely to experience the type of severe needs that most people dread. In between these two extremes, 22 percent will have low needs and 38 percent will have moderate needs. As one would expect, needs vary by marital status, education, race, and self-reported health. The final section looks ahead to the next two briefs.