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Since the 1990s, a substantial body of research literature has emerged on unmet long-term care needs, that is, the lack of adequate care for older (and sometimes younger) people with care needs. Over the last two decades, this research has spread from the United States to several countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the field of research on unmet care needs and summarizes its main research themes and key findings, focusing on the prevalence, factors and consequences of unmet needs. While this research strand has produced important empirical observations, it has remained fragmented due to methodological variation and a lack of a theoretical foundation. The chapter also describes a recent turn in the discussion, driven by the introduction of the concept of 'care poverty', which connects the literature on unmet needs with social scientific discussions on social policy and social inequalities.

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eng

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