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Dementia affects many aspects of life over a prolonged period. Yet, when studying dementia, social scientists working with administrative data typically rely on proxy measures for dementia that mean that important questions, e.g. about the diagnosis or disease stage, cannot be answered. We solve this problem by linking population registry data at Statistics Netherlands to cohort study data from the Rotterdam Study containing detailed information about cognitive decline, dementia and risk factors. We illustrate the value of this linkage by analyzing crucial decisions that people with dementia and their relatives face related to their living situation and care use. Understanding these decisions is key to designing appropriate healthcare policy responses that help to deal with the societal challenges posed by the projected increased number of people dementia in the coming years.
Picture by Getty Images on Unsplash
