Suchergebnisse

The fallout from the global economic downturn of 2008-09 is a continuing source of stress on families and a constraint on government policies. How can social policies contribute to a quick and equitable recovery from the crisis and how can they best respond to the difficulties that households continue to face? What role can and should social policy budgets play in improving the budget outlook of countries facing unsustainable government debt? And how should governments prioritise different areas of social spending when faced with heightened demand for support but, often, much reduced fiscal space? This paper addresses these questions in light of countries' experiences during the most recent and earlier economic downturns.

"This book examines the challenges countries are facing with regard to providing and paying for long-term care. With populations ageing and the need for long-term care growing rapidly, this book looks at such issues as: future demographic trends, policies to support family carers, long-term care workers, financing arrangements, long-term care insurance, and getting better value for money in long-term care."--Publisher description

BACKGROUND: With population aging, the economic burden of dementia is growing in Europe. Understanding the economic costs of dementia provides an important basis for prioritization in public health policy and resource allocation. METHODS: We calculate the economic costs of dementia, including both direct medical and social care costs and indirect costs of informal care, for 11 countries in Europe. Costs are estimated using population-representative data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe from 2004 to 2017, supplemented with external information about wages of care workers, dementia prevalence, and fraction of direct costs paid by other sources. We report overall costs for persons, both living and deceased with dementia and also isolate the costs attributable to dementia by estimating regression models that relate a given cost component to dementia while controlling for coexisting conditions and demographics. We make the monetary data comparable by adjusting for inflation and Purchasing Power Parity to 2018 euros. FINDINGS: Average annual direct out of pocket costs that can be attributed to dementia vary between EUR 253(95% CI: -17 to 522) and EUR 859 (95% CI: -587 to 2306) across countries, but are not statistically significant after adjustment for multiple testing. Average annual hours of informal care that can be attributed to dementia vary between 163 (95% CI: 27–299) and 1051 (95% CI: 15–2086) annual hours across countries, and are statistically significant in all countries before adjustment for multiple testing, and in seven out of 11 countries after this adjustment. Combining these estimates with external wage information in each country implies a burden between EUR 2687.4 (95% CI: 704.5 to 4670.3) and EUR 15,468 (95% CI: 8088.1 to 22,847.9) per individual with dementia per year depending on the country. When combined with external estimates of the fraction of direct costs covered by other payment sources (insurance, government) and numbers of individuals with dementia, estimates ...