Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/318491 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
WIFO Working Papers No. 698
Publisher: 
Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO), Vienna
Abstract: 
Population ageing will reshape economies around the world, with particular implications for longterm care (LTC) systems. As a result of past fertility decline, reflected in high levels of childlessness and smaller family networks, the growing demand for care is confronted by a declining supply of informal care. This paper presents a novel quantitative framework for cross-country comparative analysis and projections of the long-term care sector. The central innovation of this framework is the standardised assessment of care needs in hours, complemented by the modelling of care arrangements, distinguishing between nursing homes, formal home care, informal care provided by a partner, informal care provided by others and care gaps. Modelling at the individual level requires microsimulation for projections that simultaneously consider individual-level characteristics, sociodemographic dynamics and institutional factors, and scenarios such as the role and expansion paths of formal care services. Our work builds on and extends the comparative microsimulation model microWELT, which uses Eurostat population projections while adding key characteristics such as educational differences in fertility, mortality, partnerships and family size. We demonstrate the approach using projections for Austria and Italy. In Austria, the total demand for longterm care is projected to almost double by 2070, while in Italy, where the ageing process is more advanced, the total increase is much lower at around 44%. However, in Italy, due to lower fertility and greater reliance on informal care, most of the increased demand would remain unmet under current informal care provision patterns, suggesting a potential care gap larger than that projected for Austria.
Subjects: 
population ageing
long-term care
care gap
projections
dynamic microsimulation
JEL: 
C53
I11
J14
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.