Efficiency in the provision of social care for older people. A three-stage Data Envelopment Analysis using self-reported quality of life

• Three-stage DEA model to analyse efficiency in the provision of social care to older people.
• Benchmark efficiency based on quality of life within production of welfare approach.
• More stringent eligibility associated with lower quality of life.

Using a three-stage data envelopment analysis approach, this paper explores efficiency in the provision of social care for older people in 148 English Councils in 2009/10. Departing from D'Amico and Fernández (2012) [31] our measure of efficiency is inscribed within the production of welfare framework and based on self-reported quality of life of recipients of the services. Our results indicate a high level of efficiency, but once we control for the effects of a number of environmental variables, we found that more stringent eligibility criteria and higher assessment costs are negatively associated with the efficiency in the provision of social services.