A comparison of the Spanish, the French and the German valuation Scales to Measure Dependency and Public Support for People with Disabilities

Abstract

Background: Even if there is a wide consensus on the concept of a dependent individual, in practice national valuation systems produce completely different results. The objective in this work is to compare the application of different valuation scales for dependency on the Spanish population and to identify the differences in the results on the right to obtain public support. Methods: The evaluation definition and schemes that are applied in France, Germany and Spain are implemented to the Spanish population using data from the Survey on Disabilities, Dependency and Health Status. The Spanish system is compared to the other two using factorial correspondence analysis. Results: According to the survey the total number of dependent individuals in the population is 1.398.767. Under the Spanish scale, 776.475 would receive some type of public support, under the German scale 745.520 would qualify and when applying the French scale, those would be 315.514. Correspondence analysis results show that the Spanish scale is much more similar to the German scale than it is to the French scale. (Spearman’s correlation coefficient and Kendall’s are reduced by almost 40% when the Spanish scale is compared to the French scale, rather than the German scale). Conclusions: With the same personal conditions, the system used influences both the degree of severity of dependence and the possibility to become eligible to public funds. The Spanish system is the most generous and the French system is the most restrictive one, the latter also imposes limitations on age.