European countries have developed a range of long-term care (LTC) policy responses to support the increasing share of older people. However, little is known about the effectiveness of LTC services and benefits, particularly their impact on older peoples’ quality of life (QoL). This paper investigates the role of personal, care service and environmental characteristics on the effects of home care services on QoL across England, Finland and Austria. We used data from surveys conducted in England, Finland and Austria. In total, 811 older adults were included in the analysis. OLS regression including main effects and country-specific interactions was used to explore variation in gains in long-term care service-related quality-of-life (LTC-QoL). Explanatory variables were derived from the production of welfare framework and comprised home care service user socio-demographics, needs indicators, social support and environmental variables and characteristics of home care service provision. In all three countries, LTC-QoL gains increased with needs, indicating that home care services perform well, with additional gains declining the higher the needs. Also, better process quality contributed to LTC-QoL improvements in all three countries. In addition, the availability of informal care, social contact, financial household situation and living alone, were associated with changes in LTC-QoL only in one or two of the countries. Home care services increased service users’ QoL in all three European countries. The increase in QoL, however, varied across the countries. The results also provide insights into the benefits and limits of home care service provision and areas for future improvements.

JEL: I31, I38, J14

欧洲国家已经制定了一系列的长期护理（LTC）政策应对措施，以支持越来越多的老年人。但是，人们对LTC服务和福利的有效性知之甚少，尤其是它们对老年人的生活质量（QoL）的影响。本文研究了个人，护理服务和环境特征在英格兰，芬兰和奥地利的家庭护理服务对QoL的影响中的作用。我们使用了在英格兰，芬兰和奥地利进行的调查数据。分析中总共包括811个老年人。使用OLS回归（包括主要影响和特定国家/地区的相互作用）来探讨与长期护理服务相关的生活质量（LTC-QoL）的收益差异。解释性变量是从福利框架的产生中得出的，包括家庭护理服务使用者的社会人口统计资料，需求指标，社会支持和环境变量以及家庭护理服务提供的特征。在这三个国家中，LTC-QoL的收益均随需求增加，这表明家庭护理服务表现良好，而其他收益则随着需求的增加而下降。而且，更好的过程质量有助于在所有三个国家/地区改善LTC-QoL。此外，仅在一个或两个国家中，提供非正式护理，社会接触，家庭经济状况和独居生活与LTC-QoL的变化有关。在所有三个欧洲国家，家庭护理服务提高了服务使用者的生活质量。但是，不同国家/地区的QoL有所不同。

JEL： I31，I38，J14