Long-term care insurance

We evaluate a spillover effect of the Japanese public long-term care insurance (LTCI) as a policy to stimulate family caregivers’ labor force participation. Using nationally representative data from 1995 to 2013, we apply difference-in-difference propensity score matching to investigate the spillover effect in two periods: before and after the introduction of the LTCI in 2000 and before and after its major amendment in 2006.

This paper investigates theoretically how the structure of means-tested public long-term care (LTC) support influences the relationship between LTC insurance and informal care. Three types of public support encountered in various means-tested LTC schemes are examined. First, the level to be considered for means-testing only takes into account the level of wealth of the recipient without considering the cost of LTC or the possible insurance benefits. Second, the public support also considers the LTC needs of the recipient.

Many informal caregivers are of working age, facing the double burden of providing care and working. Negative labor supply effects can severely reduce the comparative cost advantage of informal over formal care arrangements. When designing long-term care (LTC) policies, it is crucial to understand the effects not only on health outcomes but also on labor supply behavior of informal caregivers. We evaluate labor supply reactions to the introduction of the German long-term care insurance in 1995 using a difference-in-differences approach.

Myanmar is one of the poorest and least healthy countries in Southeast Asia. As elsewhere in the region, population aging is occurring. Yet the government welfare and health systems have done little to address the long-term care (LTC) needs of the increasing number of older persons thus leaving families to cope on their own. Our study, based on the 2012 Myanmar Aging Survey, documents the LTC needs of persons aged 60 and older and how they are met within the context of the family.

This paper examines the labor supply outcomes of family care provision for Japanese households in 2010, ten years after the introduction of the public long-term care insurance (LTCI) program. We found that family care provision for parents adversely affected labor market outcomes of main caregivers at home in terms of the probability of working, employment status and hours worked. The adverse effect was found to be more serious for female caregivers than for male caregivers.