The impact of ethnic involvement and migration patterns on long-term care plans among retired sunbelt migrants: plans for nursing home placement.
OBJECTIVE
We examine anticipated preferences for nursing home placement as a strategy for meeting possible future long-term care needs among a sample of community-dwelling elderly European Americans who migrated to Florida after retirement. We synthesize prior research on ethnicity in late life, retirement migration patterns, and informal networks of retired migrants.


METHODS
We gathered data through structured personal interviews with 578 retired migrants identified through screening from telephone listings, supplemented with snowball sampling techniques.


RESULTS
Lifetime migration patterns and current ethnic involvement are significant predictors of mentioning nursing home placement as a strategy for possible long-term care needs.


CONCLUSIONS
We interpret these results within the framework of Rowles's emphasis on the permeability of community-nursing home boundaries.
Stoller
Eleanor Palo
EP
Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, USA. eps3@po.cwru.edu
Perzynski
Adam T
AT
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D005431:Florida; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020380:Needs Assessment; D009735:Nursing Homes; D012179:Retirement; D012944:Social Support