OBJECTIVES: The increasing economic importance of dependence on others in the elderly population is a major problem in Europe. This problem is very concerning for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, who heavily rely on informal caregivers’ assistance. Exploring the relationship between patients’ dependence on others and care expenditures is very important when planning future resources for the elderly and for predicting the economic consequences of interventions which may delay dependence. Few studies have explored such a relationship in Continental Europe. METHODS: We use data from the DEP-FR study. We ran ordered logisitic and heckman regressions. RESULTS: We provide evidence: that there is a positive and significant correlation between cognitive, functional and behavioral declines and dependence on others, that an increase in dependence on others is associated with a decrease in informal care providers’ satisfaction, that there is a linear relationship between dependence on others and informal and formal care use. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide two main dependence policies perspectives. First, public interventions should try to reduce dependence through its three main dimensions of dependence on others (cognitive, behavioral and functional), and not only focus on the functional dimension of dependence. Second, specific measures should be implemented to the release of informal caregivers’ burden, which increases with dependence on others.