Long-Term Care and Policies

Conference and Health Economics Special Issue

Providing support for older adults with care needs is one of the most important challenges aging societies will face in the near future. The rapid demographic transition characterized by reduced fertility and increased longevity concurrently increases demand for long-term care (LTC), threatens the sustainability of publicly funded LTC services, and reduces the availability of potential informal caregivers. In the last two decades, several countries designed or reformed their LTC systems in order to deal with these challenges. In view of the widely heterogenous responses to address the challenges of increasing LTC demand, it is critical to perform an evaluation of implemented policies in order to inform policy makers and other stakeholders about the effectiveness of different LTC system designs, their financial sustainability, and potential externalities (e.g., indirect effects on the labor market).

In order to promote the evaluation of LTC policies and the involvement of the scientific community in the future of LTC policymaking, the Gateway to Global Aging Data is organizing a conference on the topic. The scientific committee will select a limited number of papers and each of them will be assigned a discussant.

The conference will take place in Washington, DC, USA on November 7-8, 2023. We welcome submissions on any topic related to LTC and LTC policies, including but not limited to:

  • LTC financing
  • LTC benefit eligibility
  • Benefit generosity and nature of the benefits (e.g., whether in-cash or in-kind)
  • Cost-sharing between the beneficiary and the public system
  • Interaction with other social welfare benefits
  • Effects of LTC policies on informal caregiving, and vice versa
  • Caring and labor market participation
  • Household portfolio decision and LTC needs
  • LTC insurance and private savings

Papers in other areas of LTC research will also be considered. We encourage, in particular, submissions of analyses that leverage cross-country data and policy variation in the creation of rigorous research designs.

Deadlines:

March 31, 2023: Extended abstract due. An extended abstract is intended to provide greater detail than a typical abstract so that the scientific committee can better assess its suitability relative to other submissions. Examples of additional detail include information on the data used, preliminary analyses, identification strategy or a conceptual or economic model.

April 28, 2023: Authors of accepted papers will be notified

September 1, 2023: Submission of complete papers

October 2, 2023: Conference registration

A subset of the papers presented at the conference will be selected for a Special Issue in Health Economics. All the articles in the special issue will be Open Access to ensure a wide distribution to researchers and policy makers.

Scientific Committee
Giacomo Pasini, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Sally Stearns, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jinkook Lee, University of Southern California
Marco Angrisani, University of Southern California
David Knapp, University of Southern California