European study of long-term care expenditure: investigating the sensitivity of projections of future long-term care expenditure in Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom to changes in assumptions about demography, dependency, informal care, formal care and unit costs

Abstract

This European study of long-term care expenditure investigates the key factors that are likely to affect the future expenditure on long-term care services in Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom. The approach involves investigating how sensitive long-term care projections are to assumptions made about future trends in different factors, using comparable projection models. The main factors investigated in this study include demography changes, trends in functional dependency (defined as the ability to perform activities of daily living), future availability of informal care, the structure of formal care services and patterns of provision, and the future unit costs of services.