Abstract
The purpose of this study was to try to establish a valid method for evaluating the rate of use all home welfare services (home help service, day service and short stay service) for the aged in the 3,255 municipalities (cities, towns and villages) in Japan and to use this method to investigate the correlations between social factors and inter-municipality differences in the overall rate of use of home welfare services for the aged. It was found that it is possible to measure the overall rate of use of home welfare services for the aged in each municipality of Japan by using principal component analysis. Moreover, multiple regression analysis revealed that the differences between Japanese municipalities in the obtained overall rates of use of home welfare services for the aged were correlated with the following indices : "percentage of the population over 65 years old," "index of financial power," "percentage of the population between 15 and 29 years old," and "percentage of people working in secondary industry." The coefficient of multiple correlation when these four indices were used was 0.426. The results suggested that the extents of aging of the population, urbanization and financial power of each municipality were background factors related to the differences between Japanese municipalities in the rate of use of home welfare services for the aged.
