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Contrary to expectations that the first decades of the 21st century would experience an increase in lived time, the 2020s cast doubts on the future of old age. The Brazilian population is expected to increase until 2030, when it will reach its maximum, with a total of approximately 215 million inhabitants. A trend of population decline was already in progress and had already been documented, but the pandemic accelerated this process. This study describes a set of projections for the older Brazilian population. The projections were elaborated using the main components method, whose advantages are the possibility of separately projecting the behavior of the three demographic variables (fertility, mortality, and migrations) and obtaining results disaggregated by sex and age groups. Birth data for 2018, 2019, and 2020 suggest a 3.51 and 5.28% decrease in total births between 2018 and 2019 and 2019 and 2020, respectively. Preliminary data for 2021, which indicate the continuation of this trend between 2020–2021, show a 2.32% reduction in the number of births. The hypotheses raised for the mortality patterns, if proven to be accurate, suggest a life expectancy of 72.8 years for men and 76.2 years for women at the final period of the projection, resulting in gains of 4.6 and 2.0 years, respectively. Despite these gains, the levels obtained in 2019, pre-pandemic, would be reached by the male population only between 2035 and 2040.

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OBJECTIVES: To map the number and geospatial distribution of Brazilian long-term care facilities (LTCFs) for older adults. Additionally, we sought to highlight the relationship between these findings and the number of older people in the country's 27 Federation Units, demonstrating the growth of these facilities in the last decade. METHODS: This is a descriptive observational study, using secondary data, which was performed in 3 stages: 1) searching and consolidating national and subnational data from different sources and mapping LTCFs; 2) preparing a geospatial map using Brazilian postal codes; and 3) triangulating the number of facilities and of older people in each state and all 5 Brazilian regions. RESULTS: We found 7029 LTCFs in the country, mostly in the Southeast and South regions: São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul had the highest numbers of facilities while states in the North region represented only 1.12% of Brazilian LTCFs. Geospatial mapping highlighted that 64% of the 5 570 Brazilian municipalities did not have any LTCFs for older adults. CONCLUSIONS: We observed a large difference between Brazilian regions regarding the provision of long-term care.

Abstract: The increasing numbers of people at very old ages pose specific policy challenges for health and social care and highlight the need to rethink established models of service provision. The main objective of this paper is to introduce the concept of “avoidable displacement from home” (ADH). The study argues that ADH builds on and adds value to existing concepts, offering a holistic, person-centered framework for integrated health and social care provision for older people. It also demonstrates that this framework can be applied across different levels, ranging from macro policymaking to organizational and individual decision-making. The paper pays attention to the Brazilian context but argues that ADH is a universally applicable concept.

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE To investigate the prevalence of demand and provision of care for the Brazilian population with functional disabilities in activities of daily living. METHODS This is a quantitative and descriptive study using baseline data from ELSI-Brazil (Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging), a cohort study with a representative sample of the Brazilian population aged 50 years or older (n = 9,412). We considered the demand for care from the self-report of having some difficulty to perform at least one activity of daily life (eating, bathing, going to the toilet, dressing, moving in a room [ambulation], and transferring from chair [transfer]). Care supply was measured by having some help to perform the activity of daily living. RESULTS Approximately a quarter of the individuals evaluated (23.2%) reported difficulty in at least one activity of daily living, especially regarding transfer and dressing. Age, schooling, and number of chronic diseases were significantly associated with the difficulty in activities of daily living. Among those who reported difficulty, 35.1% received help of others and 11.8% did not receive (lack of care). The activities with greater lack of care were bathing (13.3%) and transfer (11.7%), which reveals an undignified survival condition. Care remains a family (94.1%) and female (72.1%) issue; despite the important changes that have taken place in society, there is still a lack of care policies. Of the total caregivers, 25.8% reported stopping working or studying to perform this role and only 9.2% were paid (hired ones or family members). CONCLUSIONS The ELSI-Brazil results reveal the expressive care demand of the Brazilian population aged 50 years or older with functional disabilities on activities of daily living and the lack of care policies aimed at this public.