home care clients to caregivers ratio

Dear Gwen,

Can you give a little more context/reference?  The only ACS question that I can think of that might be related to having a caregiver is about "self-care."  There are some questions about grandparents caring for grandchildren but I don't think that this s what your question is about. The ratio that they are quoting might be from 2 different surveys with, perhaps, the ACS providing the denominator or numerator.

There is an age x sex x "self-care difficulty" table  B18106 which might be related to your question. The underlying variable is the yes/no response to "Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing?" The other "difficulty" questions are:

Is this person deaf or does he/she have serious difficulty hearing?

Is this person blind or does he/she have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses?

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

Does this person have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs?

Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing?

[15 years and over] Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping?

There are some ACS tables that use "disability" as a variable e.g. B18101.  I assume that this is just the logical OR across all the difficulty questions.

There are several publications that compare different questions that are used to assess disability for various programs, such as the  Activities of Daily Living" questions. It might be useful to look at some of these.  The old "factfinder" webpage includes data on surveys besides the ACS as does data.census.gov

Don't know if this is helpful or not.

Dave Dorer

PS If you want to create a ratio of number of number of people with employment in in home care (PUMS variable OCCP) / people with a disability

(logical OR of difficulty variables DEAR DEYE etc. that would be possible using the PUMS files.

Dear Gwen,

Can you give a little more context/reference?  The only ACS question that I can think of that might be related to having a caregiver is about "self-care."  There are some questions about grandparents caring for grandchildren but I don't think that this s what your question is about. The ratio that they are quoting might be from 2 different surveys with, perhaps, the ACS providing the denominator or numerator.

There is an age x sex x "self-care difficulty" table  B18106 which might be related to your question. The underlying variable is the yes/no response to "Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing?" The other "difficulty" questions are:

Is this person deaf or does he/she have serious difficulty hearing?

Is this person blind or does he/she have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses?

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

Does this person have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs?

Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing?

[15 years and over] Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping?

There are some ACS tables that use "disability" as a variable e.g. B18101.  I assume that this is just the logical OR across all the difficulty questions.

There are several publications that compare different questions that are used to assess disability for various programs, such as the  Activities of Daily Living" questions. It might be useful to look at some of these.  The old "factfinder" webpage includes data on surveys besides the ACS as does data.census.gov

Don't know if this is helpful or not.

Dave Dorer

PS If you want to create a ratio of number of number of people with employment in in home care (PUMS variable OCCP) / people with a disability

(logical OR of difficulty variables DEAR DEYE etc. that would be possible using the PUMS files.