Objective  To examine the need and related family,community and society factors of economic and safety care among home-living oldest-old people and to provide evidences for taking supportive measures.

  Methods  We recruited 3 448 home-living residents aged ≥ 75 years with stratified random cluster sampling from communities covered by 10 community health care centers in Tangshan city; then we conducted a household questionnaire survey on falling risk and economic status among the participants between July 2016 and January 2017 with Modified Falls Risk for Older People in the Community Assessment (FROP-Com) and the Economic Support Scale.

  Results  Of all the participants, 13.92 % (480/3 448) and 25.93 % (894/3 448) reported high demand for economic and safety care and most of the demanders considered their children as the providers for the two types of care. Multivariate analyses showed that significant impact factors for economic care included helps from children (t = 3.141), neighborhood committee (t = – 3.560), siblings (t = 6.455), and volunteers (t = – 3.076) and age (t = – 4.165) (P < 0.05 for all); while those for safety care were age (t = 10.012) and helps from neighborhood (t = 7.636), spouse (t = – 5.109), children (t = – 3.587), brothers and sisters (t = 1.996), and other family members (t = – 2.112), respectively (all P < 0.05).

  Conclusion  Family members,community and social support are the strong guarantees for economic and security care for the oldest-old people. We should enhance the ability of individuals,perfect the construction of support system and promote the overall level of cares for improving life quality of the population.