Building ‘implicit partnerships’? Financial long-term care entitlements in Europe

Joan Costa-Font and Valentina Zigante

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

Abstract: The design of public subsidies for long-term care (LTC) programmes to support frail, elderly individuals in Europe is subject to both tight budget constraints and increasing demand preassures for care. However, what helps overcoming the constraints that modify LTC entitlements? We provide a unifying explanation of the conditions that facilitate the modification of public financial entitlements to LTC. We build on the concept of ‘implicit partnerships’, an implicit (or ‘silent’) agreement, encompassing the financial co-participation of both public funders, and families either by both allocating time and/or financial resources to caregiving. Next, we provide suggestive evidence of policy reforms modifying public entitlements in seven European countries which can be classified as either ‘implicit user partnerships’ or ‘implicit caregiver partnerships’. Finally, we show that taxpayers attitudes mirror the specific type of implicit partnership each country has adopted. Hence, we conclude that the modification of long-term care entitlements require the formation of some type of ‘implicit partnership'.

Keywords: implicit partnership; user partnership; caregiver partnership; partial insurance; cost sharing; long-term care; financial sustainability; family; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2020-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-eur, nep-ias, nep-mac and nep-ore
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Published in Policy Sciences, 1, December, 2020, 53(4), pp. 697 - 712. ISSN: 0032-2687

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:106099

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