The Economics of Long-Term Care (LTC)

Résumé

This paper surveys recent economic research on long-term care (LTC). LTC differs from health care: it is about nursing; it is mostly provided by unpaid caregivers (mainly spouses and children), whereas both the market and the state play a modest role. We first look at the alternative motives for caring for spouses or parents. They are important for the design of public policy. We the turn to the role of the market by looking at the causes of the so-called LTC insurance puzzle and at the rules of reimbursement. The future of LTC appears to be gloomy: sustained population ageing and recent societal trends finally, we turn to the design of a sustainable public LTC scheme integrating both the market and the family.