Homecare of elderly Brazilians with functional dependency: inequalities and challenges during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The article aims to analyze the pandemic’s effect on the burden of care for elderly persons with functional dependency according to the presence of hired caregivers and socioeconomic conditions in the year 2020. Data were obtained from the ConVid – Behavior Survey of 2020. We calculated the percentage distribution and prevalence of the population living with elderly persons with functional dependency during the COVID-19 pandemic according to sex, race/color, and income. We estimated the Pearson chi-square test and prevalence ratio for the increase in household work, fitting Poisson regression models with robust variance and using 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). Among adults living with elderly individuals, 8.1% (95%CI: 7.1-9.4) had at least one elderly person with functional dependency. During the pandemic, 11.7% (95%CI: 8.5-16.0) stopped hiring third-party caregivers, which can be explained by social distancing to reduce risk of transmission and/or by the decline in families’ purchasing power. Those who lost hired caregivers during the pandemic were more likely to experience an increase in the burden of care, regardless of their socioeconomic status. There was an unequal distribution of caregiving work in the population, intensified by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. The heavier load of care for elderly persons with functional dependency was sharper in more socioeconomically privileged groups such as whites and those with higher income. One hypothesis is that more vulnerable groups already bore a high burden of care before the pandemic. The crisis in care has been aggravated by the dismantling of primary healthcare in Brazil, a reduction in social support for Brazilian families during the pandemic, and rising unemployment, decreasing families’ capacity to hire caregivers.