Discusses the Swedish experience in which the official old-age care policy has been to substitute home care for institutional care. Found some substitution of the two forms of long-term care which took place from 1965-75, but thereafter the use of long-term care institutions and home care remained stable or contracted. (Author/ABL)

Purpose: Few international comparisons of health services are performed using microlevel data. Using such data, this paper compares the need for and receipt of assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs) in comparable samples in the United States and Sweden, a country with a universal system of community-based services. Design and Methods:…

Studied feelings of loneliness in relation to disease, handicaps, social network and social background in (N=1,007) 70-year-old people in Sweden. Loneliness was a problem to 24% of women and 12% of men. Most important factors related to loneliness were loss of spouse, depression of mood, and lack of friends. (Author)