Is elderly care keeping up as the elderly grow in number?
Short answer: Residents aged 80 or over rose from 433,000 in 1998 to 684,000 in 2025. Over the same period the number of them living in residential care fell from about 86,000 to 66,000, by our calculation. Someone with home care meets 16 different staff members over two weeks in a typical municipality. Just over one in five with home care or in residential care has a private provider, but in 183 of 288 municipalities the municipality runs all home care itself. About 144,000 people have dementia, and dementia accounts for roughly half of what municipalities spend on elderly care.
More elderly, fewer in care homes.
People aged 80 or over have grown by just over 250,000 since 1998. Those living in residential care have not grown in number but shrunk, so the share has fallen below 10 percent. More people stay at home with home care; how many and what it costs is on Pensions and old age. How many elderly there will be in the future is on Population.
How many different staff come to your home?
Municipalities count how many different employees visit someone with home care over fourteen days. Fewer faces usually means safer care. The figure has been fairly stable nationally, but the gap between municipalities is wide: from 6 to 24 staff.
Who runs the care?
Just over one in five elderly people with home care or in residential care gets it from a company or a non-profit, but they live in a handful of municipalities. In most municipalities the municipality does everything itself. What research says about letting private providers run welfare is on Privatisation.
Half of elderly care is about dementia.
- People with dementia, aged 65 and over
- 144,000
- Karolinska Institutet,
- Cost to society per year
- SEK 81.6 bn
- Karolinska Institutet,
- Per person with dementia
- SEK 566,000
- Karolinska Institutet,
- Share borne by municipalities
- 82 %
- Karolinska Institutet,
Almost the entire cost of dementia falls on the municipalities, in residential care and home care. People with dementia account for about 70 percent of what municipalities spend on everyone in residential care, and dementia accounts for roughly half of the municipalities' total elderly care cost. In fixed prices the cost has risen by about 40 percent since 2000.
The figures exist only for the whole country. No open statistics show how many people with dementia live in each municipality, so they cannot be compared between municipalities here. What residential care and home care cost per municipality is in the table below.
Source: Frisell, Jönsson and Wimo (2023), The societal costs of dementia in Sweden 2019, Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish Dementia Centre. The costs are for 2019, before the pandemic.
Healthcare queues and quality of care region by region are on Healthcare, and support for people with disabilities under LSS on Disability support (LSS).
Same law, different care.
The Social Services Act applies across the country, but what care costs and how satisfied the elderly are varies a lot. The table shows the lowest and highest municipality, the middle of all municipalities, the national figure and the municipality you chose above. How cost and satisfaction have changed over time is on Pensions and old age, and what the elderly themselves think under satisfaction.
| Measure | Year | Lowest | Middle | Highest | Sweden | Chosen municipality |
|---|
Kronor in current prices. The middle is the median: half of the municipalities are above and half below. Small municipalities have few survey answers and few care homes, so their figures jump between years and often end up at the extremes. Waiting time and staff continuity have no national value in Kolada; there the national figure is our calculation of the middle of the municipalities.
Where the figures come from.
- Source: Kolada. Residents aged 80 and over, share in residential care, staff continuity, private providers, costs, waiting time and satisfaction. Satisfaction comes from the National Board of Health and Welfare's survey of what the elderly think of elderly care, the other measures from Statistics Sweden, the National Board of Health and Welfare and the municipalities' own data.
- Source: Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish Dementia Centre, The societal costs of dementia in Sweden 2019. National figures only.
- Our own processing of Kolada data: the number aged 80 and over in residential care, as the share times the number of residents aged 80 and over in each municipality, with the national figure as the sum of municipalities. National staff continuity and waiting time as the median of municipalities.
- Not included: the number of people with dementia per municipality. It is not in any open statistics.
Nothing is estimated by us except what is listed under own processing. A dashed vertical line in a chart marks a year when the definition or source changed. Pensions, home care and what elderly care costs over time are on Pensions and old age, and how the population is ageing on Population.