Panorama de la protección económica y asistencial pública y privada de las personas mayores en España

Abstract

Nowadays, the Spanish public health care system on the one hand, and the pension system on the other, are hardly enough to serve elderly needs once they retire. The statistical data that I use in the first part of this paper may show it. Although family care still remains the main way to provide care to elderly people -traditionally, it was taken for granted that the family would take care of family members in need of care- it is now required to develop other alternatives at the private sector to serve their needs. However, despite the increasing interest in alternative investments, these kind of assets hardly represent a significant proportion in elderly budgets. At the same time we have to take into account that these instruments are designed to complement the public resources, not to replace them. Nevertheless, if private and public institutions work together it would be possible to provide a complete protection for their specific problems of adequate income, health, housing, culture and leisure, needs that the Spanish constitution refers to in its section 50. This paper intends to offer a brief description about the status of the elderly in our society and the solutions the public network and private market can offer them. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]