The Healthcare and Societal Costs of Familial Intellectual Disability

Deborah Schofield, Rupendra Shrestha, Owen Tan (), Katherine Lim, Radhika Rajkumar, Sarah West, Jackie Boyle, Lucinda Murray, Melanie Leffler, Louise Christie, Morgan Rice, Natalie Hart, Jinjing Li, Robert Tanton (), Tony Roscioli and Mike Field
Additional contact information
Rupendra Shrestha: GenIMPACT, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Owen Tan: GenIMPACT, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Katherine Lim: GenIMPACT, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Radhika Rajkumar: GenIMPACT, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Sarah West: GenIMPACT, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Jackie Boyle: Genetics of Learning Disability (GoLD) Service, Newcastle, NSW 2298, Australia
Lucinda Murray: Genetics of Learning Disability (GoLD) Service, Newcastle, NSW 2298, Australia
Melanie Leffler: Genetics of Learning Disability (GoLD) Service, Newcastle, NSW 2298, Australia
Louise Christie: Genetics of Learning Disability (GoLD) Service, Newcastle, NSW 2298, Australia
Morgan Rice: GenIMPACT, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Natalie Hart: GenIMPACT, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Tony Roscioli: New South Wales Health Pathology Genomics, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, Sydney, NSW 2031, Australia
Mike Field: National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM), Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT 2617, Australia

IJERPH, 2024, vol. 21, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: Most of the studies on the cost of intellectual disability are limited to a healthcare perspective or cohorts composed of individuals where the etiology of the condition is a mixture of genetic and non-genetic factors. When used in policy development, these can impact the decisions made on the optimal allocation of resources. In our study, we have developed a static microsimulation model to estimate the healthcare, societal, and lifetime cost of individuals with familial intellectual disability, an inheritable form of the condition, to families and government. The results from our modeling show that the societal costs outweighed the health costs (approximately 89.2% and 10.8%, respectively). The lifetime cost of familial intellectual disability is approximately AUD 7 million per person and AUD 10.8 million per household. The lifetime costs to families are second to those of the Australian Commonwealth government (AUD 4.2 million and AUD 9.3 million per household, respectively). These findings suggest that familial intellectual disability is a very expensive condition, representing a significant cost to families and government. Understanding the drivers of familial intellectual disability, especially societal, can assist us in the development of policies aimed at improving health outcomes and greater access to social care for affected individuals and their families.

Keywords: intellectual disability; familial intellectual disability; cost-of-illness; microsimulation; health economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/3/299/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/3/299/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:21:y:2024:i:3:p:299-:d:1351130

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().