Analysis of dependency law in Spain: A perspective based on spatial panel data

The aim of the paper is to analyze whether economic, financial and sociodemographic variables may have caused certain inequalities in the establishment and development of the dependency law in Spain, between different regions. An original database was developed with this information provided by the Statistics Service of the Attached General Department of Value, Quality and Evaluation of the System of Autonomy and Dependence Care, offered by the Institute of Elderly and Social Services of Spain, the National Institute of Statistics and the National Institute of Social Security. Among the dependent variables, the number of applications of dependency registered, reports and supplementary information about the recognized degree of dependency or type of delivery established were included. On the other hand, as explanatory variables the total population, people with disabilities, age distribution, population density, gross domestic product per capita, unemployment, the number of unemployed and unemployed without benefits, and the number of pensioners and pensioners with minimal pension complements were used. The level of disaggregation of information used was: Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUT) 2 Spanish Regions. A spatial panel model was used for data analysis. Direct, indirect and total effects were estimated. When analyzing whether economic, financial and sociodemographic variables may have caused inequities in the dependency law between differen regions we observed that inequalities are explained by intrinsic characteristics of the territory (whose effects are reflected in the economic and financial covariates) as well as spatial and temporal dependencies. 

Keywords: inequality, Dependency Law, spatial panel

Clasificación JEL: C31, C33, I38