Conclusions

Abstract

AbstractThis final chapter sums up the key findings and arguments of the book and highlights its lessons for policy and research. The main argument of the book has been that it should become a primary issue for researchers and policy-makers whether older people receive the help they need. Long-term care systems need to be evaluated based not just on their expenditures and service provisions but on their impact in older people’s lives. The book has described and summarised the state of the art in research on unmet care needs, but it has also suggested a new framework, based on the novel concept of care poverty. The book understands care poverty as a dimension of inequality in its own right, not only as a reflection of poverty or other social inequalities. Care poverty needs to be seen in its societal and policy contexts, which requires social policy analysis and inequality research to be combined with the study of unmet care needs. The book ends with a statement that overcoming care poverty means protecting the fundamental human right to dignity and a decent life.