Research on the Costs of Long - Term Care for Older People – Current and Emerging Issues

This review explores debates concerning the costs of long-term care for older people, and aims to give an overview of the recent and current research agenda in this area, referring primarily to work published 2000–2006. The focus of much work is on the identification of costs, their distribution and the contexts of policy and delivery of services in which these operate. Live debates concern future costs, their control and related issues of social justice and equity. A particular focus of recent work has been potential international lessons. For example, Harrington et al. (2002) and Schunk and Estes (2001) consider the transferability of the German long-term care financing model to the USA and a number of cross national surveys have been published (e.g. OECD, 2005). There are of course significant issues attached to comparability of research findings and the potential transferability of policies between different welfare and fiscal regimes. The most fruitful comparisons to date have involved countries more similar in terms of economic development, and this review focuses on OECD countries. In low-income, less developed economies, issues are significantly different (HelpAge International, 2002).