Policy Options for Financing the Future Health and Long-term Care Costs in Japan

Tadashi Fukui and Yasushi Iwamoto
Additional contact information
Tadashi Fukui: Faculty of Economics, Kyoto Sangyo University

No CIRJE-F-432, CIRJE F-Series from CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo

Abstract: As the Japanese population structure changes, health care and long-term care costs will steadily increase. The current style of financing (pay-as-you-go) will create a large increase in future burden of these costs. This paper studies an alternative policy that prefunds the social insurance benefits for the elderly. During a transition process, the proposed scheme maintains a higher contribution rate in order to accumulate sufficient funds. Under our baseline scenario, the sum of the contribution rates toward health insurance and long-term care insurance increases from 5.06 percent of earnings to 12.41 percent of the same. The rate of increase in overall burdens, including taxes and subsidies, is 63 percent. Our sensitivity analysis has shown that the quantitative implications of the increase in total burdens depend on social cost scenarios, the labor force, and the interest rate. However, labor force scenarios do not have a considerable impact on the rate of burden. As against this, the setting of social costs has a significant impact on the same. Even under the most optimistic scenario, the rate of increase in total burden is 34 percent. Even though we cannot predict the exact amount of the necessary contribution rate that is capable enough to transfer the funded system, what we are sure of is that a significant increase in the contribution rate is inevitable.

Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2006-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Chapter: Policy Options for Financing Future Health and Long-Term Care Costs in Japan (2007)
Working Paper: Policy Options for Financing the Future Health and Long-Term Care Costs in Japan (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tky:fseres:2006cf432

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