Housing resources, perceived support needs and residential preferences across hypothetical health scenarios among older adults in Korea: a cross-sectional study
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Background. Residential preferences may depend on anticipated functional circumstances and the support required to remain at home. We examined associations of housing resources and perceived support needs with current-home preference across two hypothetical health scenarios and with alternative residential destinations. Methods. This cross-sectional secondary analysis included 9951 self-responding community-dwelling adults aged 65 years or older from the 2023 National Survey of Older Koreans. Survey-weighted logistic and multinomial models incorporated clustering by 977 primary sampling units. Model-standardised probability contrasts and paired cross-scenario contrasts were estimated. Results. Weighted current-home preference was 87.2% under maintained health and 48.9% under declining health, a paired maintained-minus-declining difference of 38.3 percentage points (95% confidence interval [CI] 35.7 to 41.0). Adjusted owner-occupancy contrasts were 9.3 and 15.1 percentage points, respectively; the declining-minus-maintained difference was 5.8 points (95% CI 0.6 to 10.9). Daily-living support need was associated with contrasts of − 1.0 and − 15.8 percentage points, respectively; the declining-minus-maintained difference was − 14.8 points (95% CI − 19.2 to − 10.4). Under declining health, adjusted relative risk ratios comparing senior-housing with long-term-care-facility preference were 1.72 (95% CI 1.29 to 2.28) for housing-improvement need and 0.65 (95% CI 0.48 to 0.89) for daily-living support need. Conclusions. Housing resources and perceived support needs were associated with scenario-specific and destination-specific residential preferences. These findings may inform discussions of future living arrangements and support requirements in geriatric care.
Source: Research Square
Language: English
Subfield: Life-span and Life-course Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225809632