Background: Elderly people (>60 years) in Chile represented 11.4% (n = 1,717,478) of the total population in 2002. The group with disabilities or mental problems is increasing and there is no reliable information about the number of institutionalized elderly subjects. Aim: To estimate the number of elderly people living in residences for long term care and their and main characteristics. Patients and methods: Chilean Census does not provide: exact information about institutional care, therefore; we developed "proxy" indicator of the: percentage of institutionalized elderly (those living in "collective residences with more than 5 elderly persons and in which they represent more than 25% of the residents". This proxy has a R2=0.9859 with the true value of institutionalized persons for those Latin-American countries with exact value in census data at CELADE. Results: Using the proxy we found that institutionalized elderly population had increased,from. 14,114 (1992) to 26,854 (2002) and is projected to reach 83,500 (2025). In 2002, there were 1,668 institutions (37.4% informal care). In the Metropolitan Area, there were 804 institutions (14,178 elderly persons) and 40.3% of these were registered at the Ministry of Health. The proportion of institutionalized elderly subjects was 1.56% of the total elderly population; this proportion increased from 0.87% in subjects 60-74 years old to 2.5% among subjects aged 75-84 years and 6.1% in subjects 85 years old and over. Among subjects living in institutions, 60.9 were women, 21% were married, 35% were single, approximately 50% receive a pension and around 15% were handicapped. Conclusions: Institutional care affects a small percentage of elderly population, but it will increase to the near future. The main characteristics of institutionalized elderly subjects are not well known. We propose to create a formal Registry of these institutions and to include Nursing Homes and hospitals in type of housing of future Censuses.
