EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Demographic change, healthcare, and long-term care

Sonja Spitzer and Claudia Reiter

Chapter 3 in Handbook of Social Infrastructure, 2024, pp 57-85 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The world has gone from centuries of negligible population growth to an unprecedented acceleration in the 20th century. Increasing longevity and declining fertility have introduced an era of population aging and, in some regions, population decline is on the rise, often reinforced by outmigration of the young and the skilled. These demographic changes have substantial consequences for social infrastructure (SI), particularly healthcare (HC) and long-term care (LTC). Expenditure for HC and LTC is increasing, and the declining workforce widens the gap between demand and supply. At the same time, changing family structures and women’s labor market participation further reduce the supply of informal care. While in-migration is often seen as a remedy, its effectiveness and negative externalities are debated. The future impact of demographic change on HC and LTC hinges on policy responses, and whether we spend our additional life years in good or in bad health.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Geography; Sociology and Social Policy; Urban and Regional Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800883130.00012 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:20560_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:20560_3