Costs and prospects for home based Long Term Care in Northern Italy: the Galca survey

Francesca Bettio (), Fernanda Mazzotta () and Giovanni Solinas
Additional contact information
Francesca Bettio: Dipartimento di Economia Politica, UniversitaÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ di Siena
Giovanni Solinas: Dipartimento di Economia Politica, UniversitaÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ di Modena e Reggio Emilia

No 103, CELPE Discussion Papers from CELPE - CEnter for Labor and Political Economics, University of Salerno, Italy

Abstract: An important issue in the design of sustainable Long Term Care policies is the relative social cost of community or home based care versus institutional care. Here we undertake this cost comparison making use of the findings from the GALCA surveys on Long Term Care in Denmark, Ireland and Italy but confining attention to Italy. The survey for Italy was conducted in the municipality of Modena that may be considered broadly representative of Long Term Care conditions in the North of the country. It offers detailed descriptions of the carers and the cared for ranging from demographic and epidemiological characteristics to labour market position. The survey also allows to accurately compile all the ÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂinputsÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂàthat go into home care, from ÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂunpaidÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂàfamily labour and paid labour of immigrant minders to public and private services. Based on this information, we calculate the overall, per elderly social cost of home based care and find that home based care is more cost effective than institutional care even if the opportunity cost of ÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂunpaidÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂàfamily carers is valued and included in the calculation. We discuss the reasons for cost effectiveness and identify some of the risk factors that threaten the long term sustainability of current home care arrangements in Italy.

Keywords: Government; Expenditure; Health-Analysis Health Care; Market-Economics; Elderly-Time; allocation; Labour; Supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I11 J14 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2007-03-01
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.celpe.unisa.it/uploads/rescue/784/1048/103_dp.pdf Full text (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:sal:celpdp:0103

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CELPE Discussion Papers from CELPE - CEnter for Labor and Political Economics, University of Salerno, Italy via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 - Fisciano (SA), ITALY. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roberto Dell'Anno ().