One of the main concerns about the demographic ageing projected for these coming decades is the impact it might have on future numbers of elderly dependents.This working paper, which exploits microdata from the Spanish National Health Survey of 1993 and 2001, has a dual objective: first, to trackthe evolution in this period of dependency problem samong the elderly and, second, to analyse the influence at work of various sociodemographic factors.

The results show a decrease of more than two percentage points in the percentage of elderly people with dependency problems between 1993 and 2001. Among factors positively associated with this development we can single out the age structure of the elderly population, their educational level and the lower prevalence of smoking among their number. Meantime, factors opposing the observed decline are primarily the higher percentage of people who are overweight or obese, and the greater prevalence of certain chronic diseases.