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. 2023 Nov;71(11):3574-3583.
doi: 10.1111/jgs.18547. Epub 2023 Aug 17.

Changes in late-life assistance networks for Black and White older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

Deborah M Oyeyemi  1   2 , I-Fen Lin  3 , Haowei Wang  4 , Daniel Gan  5 , Monique J Brown  6 , Vicki A Freedman  7 , Mark Manning  8
Affiliations

Changes in late-life assistance networks for Black and White older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

Deborah M Oyeyemi et al. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2023 Nov.

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted older Black Americans. Given that assistance networks play a crucial role in older adults' ability to respond to challenges, we sought to investigate whether older adults' assistance network size changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and differed by race.

Methods: We analyzed data from the 2018-2020 rounds of the U.S. National Health and Aging Trends Study for Black and White adults aged 70 and older receiving help in the community or residential care settings. We used ordinary least squares regression to compare changes in assistance network size in the 2 years pre-COVID-19 (2018-2019, N = 3438) to changes in size at the onset of COVID-19 (2019-2020, N = 3185).

Results: Black older adults had larger assistance networks with a greater number of family helpers before and during the pandemic compared to their White counterparts. Assistance network size for older adults increased before but not during the pandemic mostly due to declines in unpaid nonrelative helpers and lack of increase in paid helpers. These effects did not differ by race.

Conclusions: Black and White older adults experienced similarly sized reductions in their assistance networks as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Future research should investigate the relationship between these network changes and the unmet needs of older adults.

Keywords: COVID-19; assistance networks; caregiving; race.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Mean Assistance Network Size by Race (Black vs. White) and Time Period (Pre-COVID-19 vs. COVID-19) Note: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. Source: National Health and Aging Trends Study.
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