Policy dilemmas in financing long-term care in Europe

Joan Costa-Font, Christophe Courbage and Peter Zweifel

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Long-term care (LTC) is the largest insurable risk facing the elderly in most western societies. Paradoxically, institutional responses to the need to insure ex-ante (before the contingency occurs) the financial risks of needing LTC (by means of social and private insurance and self-insurance) exhibit limited development. In contrast, mechanisms to finance LTC ex-post continue to develop, primarily those supported by the public sector (by means of subsidies or tax deductions) and the family (by means of intergenerational transfers). Both ex-ante and ex-post types of financing mechanisms are found to be subject to shortcomings which give rise to dilemmas for public policy. Governments confront these dilemmas in different ways, causing a great deal of heterogeneity in the financing and provision of LTC services across Europe.

Keywords: long-term care; old age dependency; long-term care insurance; subsidies; tax deductions for providing formal care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-ias
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in Global Policy, 1, March, 2017, 8(S2), pp. 38-45. ISSN: 1758-5880

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Journal Article: Policy Dilemmas in Financing Long-term Care in Europe (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:61032

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