Monthly on the 3rd Thursday

8am US Pacific Time, 11am US Eastern Time, 5pm Central European Time

The Gateway to Global Aging, in partnership with the Center to Accelerate Population Research in Alzheimer’s (capra.med.umich.edu), is organizing a monthly virtual seminar series on long-term care, services, and policy. The seminar series is led by Courtney Van Houtven from Duke University and Elsa Perdrix from Paris Dauphine University. The goal of the seminar series is to promote international interactions among scholars in this growing field of research. Presentations will typically be on in-progress work and discussions are strongly encouraged.

Participants must register to receive upcoming seminar announcements and virtual meeting room links. To register please submit a form with your email here. Emails will be kept limited to seminar announcements and you can unsubscribe from this list at any time.

Upcoming Presentations:

• November 19, 2026

  Brenda Cude, University of Georgia

  "Care without Coverage? Long-Term Care Insurance Challenges in the U.S."

  Some of the most significant issues associated with financing long-term care (LTC) in the United States center on the role of insurance. These challenges include the availability and affordability of long-term care insurance (LTCI), eligibility for coverage, the evolution of the market from standalone LTCI policies to hybrid products that combine LTC benefits with life insurance or annuities, substantial premium increases for holders of legacy policies, and efforts to establish state-based LTC insurance programs. Together, how we respond to these issues will influence the viability of long-term care insurance as a mechanism to help U.S. consumers finance their future care needs.

• December 10, 2026 (Special date: second Thursday instead of usual third Thursday)

  Hailey Brace, Harvard University

  "Immigrant Labor Supply and Long-Term Care: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study"

  Immigrants constitute a disproportionate share of the U.S. long-term care (LTC) workforce, representing approximately one-third of direct care workers. This includes 21% of direct care workers in nursing facilities and 32% in home care. Despite the political salience of immigration policy, contemporary debates rarely account for its downstream consequences for older adults. While prior research (e.g., Grabowski et al., 2023) indicates that immigration increases facility-level staffing, this paper shifts the focus to individual-level outcomes. Utilizing restricted data from the Health and Retirement Study (2004–2018), we estimate the causal impact of immigration-driven changes in local LTC labor supply on nursing home residence and the receipt of formal home-based care, with a particular focus on adults with cognitive impairment. To address the endogeneity of immigrant settlement patterns, we employ an instrumental variables strategy using a shift-share instrument that interacts historical settlement patterns with national-level shocks and origin-specific propensities for care-related employment. In the full sample (≈94,000 person-wave observations), IV estimates indicate that an increased immigrant care supply raises formal home health use by 4.1 percentage points and reduces the probability of nursing home residence by 0.36 percentage points. These average effects mask significant heterogeneity concentrated among high-need populations. Among individuals in the top decile of predicted nursing home use, higher immigrant care supply is associated with a 7.0 percentage point reduction in nursing home residence. For adults aged 75+ with fair or poor memory, the estimated reduction is 5.3 percentage points. Impacts on home health use are even more pronounced: increases of 19.7 percentage points for the top decile of predicted use and 24.0 percentage points for memory-impaired adults aged 75+. These findings suggest that immigration-driven expansions in the LTC workforce facilitate a substitution toward community-based services, particularly for those with the cognitive impairment. Our results highlight immigration policy as a critical, yet under-recognized, lever for enhancing LTC access and supporting the ability of cognitively impaired older adults to age in place.

• January 21, 2027

  Paige Lin, Tufts University

• February 18, 2027

  TBD

• March 18, 2027 (Special time for US: 9am PT instead of 8am)

  Violette Dolle, Paris Dauphine University

• April 15, 2027

  TBD

• May 20, 2027

  Pieter Bakx, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Thank you to those who have already presented:

• January 19, 2023

  Julien Bergeot of the Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (joint work with Louis Arnault)

  "Informal Care & Mental Health: A Story of Unobserved Heterogeneity"

• February 16, 2023

  Marlies Bär of the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam (joint work with Pieter Bakx, Nigel Rice, Rita Santos, Luigi Siciliani, and Bram Wouterse)

  "Spillovers of Delayed Nursing Home Admissions to the Hospital Sector"

• March 16, 2023

  Edward Norton, University of Michigan

  "Did Avoiding Post-Acute SNF Care During COVID Save Lives?"

  https://doi.org/10.31389/jltc.236

• April 20, 2023

  Ingo Kolodziej of RWI Essen (joint work with Norma B. Coe of the University of Pennsylvania and Courtney H. Van Houtven of Duke University)

  "Intensive Informal Care and Impairments in Work Productivity and Activity"

• May 18, 2023

  Joan Costa-i-Font, London School of Economics

  "Are Long term care subsidies and supports productive? Effects on health and wellbeing"

• September 21, 2023

  Elsa Perdrix, Paris Dauphine University

  "Horizontal Inequity in Long-term Care Use in France"

• October 19, 2023

  Bertrand Achou, University of Groningen

  "At Home versus in a Nursing Home: Long-term Care Settings and Marginal Utility"

• November 16, 2023

  R. Tamara Konetzka, University of Chicago

  "The Role of Medicaid Home- and Community-Based Services in Use of Medicare Post-Acute Care"

  https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.14325

• Dec 14, 2023

  Anne Penneau, Institute for Research and Information in Health Economics "The Impact of Nursing Homes on Quality of Drug Prescription in France"

• February 15, 2024

  Helena M. Hernandez-Pizarro, Pompeu Fabra University

  "Unravelling Hidden Inequities in a Universal Public Long-Term Care System"

• March 21, 2024

  Sung Ah Bahk, American University (joint work with Selin Secil Akin, Lidia Brun, Ignacio Gonzalez, and Aina Puig)

  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5599570

  "Universal Long-term Care Reform and the Labor Supply of Caregivers: Evidence from Korea"

• April 18, 2024

  Meghan Skira, University of Georgia

  "Genetic Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias: Cognition, Economic Behavior, and Clinically Actionable Information"

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32181/w32181.pdf