The Role of Culture in Long-term Care

Elena Gentili, Giuliano Masiero and Fabrizio Mazzonna
Additional contact information
Elena Gentili: Institute of Economics (IdEP), Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), Switzerland

IdEP Economic Papers from USI Università della Svizzera italiana

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to assess the role of culture in shaping individual preferences to- wards different long-term care (LTC) arrangements. The analysis uses Swiss data from two administrative databases covering the universe of formal LTC providers between 2007 and 2013. Switzerland is a multi-cultural confederation where state administrative borders do not always coincide with cultural groups. For this reason, we exploit the within-state variation in cultural groups to show evidence about cultural differences in LTC use. In particular, we use spatial regression discontinuity design (RDD) at the language border between French-speaking and German-speaking individuals living in bilingual cantons to provide causal interpretation of the differences in formal LTC use between these two main cultural groups. Our results suggest a strong role of culture in shaping household decisions about formal LTC use. In particular, elderly people residing in regions speaking a Latin language (French, Italian and Romansh) use home-based care services more intensely and enter in nursing homes at older ages and in worse health conditions with respect to elderly people in German regions. This difference across the two cultural groups are driven by different preferences towards LTC arrangements.

Keywords: Long-term care; Culture; Spatial RDD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2016-04-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cul, nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://doc.rero.ch/record/259168/files/wp1605.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lug:wpidep:1605

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IdEP Economic Papers from USI Università della Svizzera italiana
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alessio Tutino ().