Determinants of the volume of professional assistance for beneficiaries of the APA at home: the role of the remaining expenses.

Summary The Personalized Autonomy Allowance (APA), which came into effect in 2002, is a public aid dedicated to dependent elderly people, which aims to reduce the cost of taking care of their difficulties in the activities of daily living (cleaning, dressing, etc.). For people living at home, this assistance is partial in two ways: for each hour of assistance, the APA generally covers only a portion of the cost and the allowance is only granted for a limited number of hours per month. Beneficiaries must therefore pay a remaining amount for each hour of assistance used. Does the existence of this remaining cost and its amount have an impact on the amount of professional assistance actually used by APA recipients? What is the weight of the other determinants of the demand for professional help at home (degree of dependence, age, gender, income, municipality of residence, etc.)? This paper aims to answer these questions by presenting the results of an econometric study based on administrative files of APA beneficiaries in a metropolitan department.