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The Care Dividend

The Care Dividend
Open Access

The Care Dividend

Why and How Countries Should Invest in Long-Term Care
Jonathan Cylus, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
George Wharton, London School of Economics and Political Science
Ludovico Carrino, University of Trieste
Stefania Ilinca, World Health Organization
Manfred Huber, World Health Organization
Sarah Louise Barber, World Health Organization
March 2025
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    Long-term care often falls by the wayside in national policy dialogues. As populations age around the world and the prevalence of chronic conditions increases, greater numbers of people will need care and support, putting added pressures on acute-care facilities, communities, and families, among others. This increase in demand for long-term care raises questions about the capacity of governments to provide access to needed care, how these services will be properly resourced and who should receive these benefits. The Care Dividend provides a roadmap for investing in long-term care systems. It argues for increased public investment in high-quality, universally accessible long-term care and explains why these systems benefit everyone: households, health systems, economies, and societies. Bringing together a team of academics and policy experts from around the world, this book explains why and how governments can, and should, take action.
    This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

    • Offers a roadmap for policymakers interested in investing in long-term care systems
    • Brings together the evidence on how long-term care benefits households, economies, health systems, and societies
    • Written by experts from multiple countries around the world offering perspectives that are not limited to a small group of countries
    • Title is Open Access

    Product details

    March 2025
    Adobe eBook Reader
    9781009563420
    0 pages
    This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Introduction Ludovico Carrino, Jonathan Cylus, George Wharton, Stefania Ilinca, Manfred Huber and Sarah Louise Barber
    • 2. Historical and future drivers of long-term care demand Bo Hu and Raphael Wittenberg
    • 3. Who should be eligible for long-term care in older age? Policy trade-offs and implications for coverage, equity and wellbeing Ludovico Carrino, Mauricio Avendano, Tiago Cravo Oliveira Hashiguchi, José Carlos, Ortega Regalado and Ana Llena-Nozal
    • 4. How have countries configured long-term care service delivery to improve efficiency and access to needed services? Florian Tille, Astrid Eriksen, Stefania Ilinca and Ewout van Ginneken
    • 5. Financing of long-term care Adelina Comas-Herrera, Eva Cyhlarova, Jayeeta Rajagopalan, Ishtar Govia and Zhanlian Feng
    • 6. How have countries worked to improve the quality of long-term care? Juliette Malley and Valentina Zigante
    • 7. Does a strong long-term care system benefit the health system (and vice-versa)? Gemma Frances Spiers
    • 8. Sharing the burden: the impact of long-term care on the financial situation of families in Europe Ricardo Rodrigues, Cassandra Simmons and Kai Leichsenring
    • 9. Does a strong long-term care system benefit societal wellbeing? Hee-Kang Kim
    • 10. A strong long-term care system is necessary for economic growth Katherine Swartz
    • 11. Conclusion: towards universal, high-quality long-term care: changing the narrative Stefania Ilinca, Ludovico Carrino, Jonathan Cylus, George Wharton, Manfred Huber and Sarah Louise Barber.
      Contributors
    • Ludovico Carrino, Jonathan Cylus, George Wharton, Stefania Ilinca, Manfred Huber, Sarah Louise Barber, Bo Hu, Raphael Wittenberg, Mauricio Avendano, Tiago Cravo Oliveira Hashiguchi, José Carlos, Ortega Regalado, Ana Llena-Nozal, Florian Tille, Astrid Eriksen, Ewout van Ginneken, Adelina Comas-Herrera, Eva Cyhlarova, Jayeeta Rajagopalan, Ishtar Govia, Zhanlian Feng, Juliette Malley, Valentina Zigante, Gemma Frances Spiers, Ricardo Rodrigues, Cassandra Simmons, Kai Leichsenring, Hee-Kang Kim,Katherine Swartz

    • Editors
    • Jonathan Cylus , European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies

      Jonathan Cylus is the head of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies' London Hubs and a Senior Health Economist in the WHO Barcelona Office for Health Systems Financing. His main research is on health systems, focusing primarily on health financing policy, health economics and health system performance, as well as on the economics of population ageing. He has worked on these topics in a wide range of countries, as well as with the European Commission, OECD and WHO.

    • George Wharton , London School of Economics and Political Science

      George Wharton is Associate Professor (Education) of Health Policy in the Department of Health Policy at London School of Economics. He has consulted and written for national governments, international organisations, philanthropic foundations and industry bodies, and has authored articles on health systems and policies in the BMJ and The Lancet, among others. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Healthcare Management, and is a Board Trustee of the Paul Strickland Scanner Centre.

    • Ludovico Carrino , University of Trieste

      Ludovico Carrino is Senior Lecturer of Public Economics at the Department of Economics, Business, Mathematics and Statistics 'Bruno de Finetti' at the University of Trieste, as well as Visiting Professor at the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at King's College London. He has authored books and articles in leading journals in the fields of Economics, Gerontology and Epidemiology, with particular focus on the economics of long-term care and Pensions, as well as on social determinants of health. He is currently leading the Trieste Unit for the NIA-funded Gateway to Global Aging Data project.

    • Stefania Ilinca , World Health Organization

      Stefania Ilinca is Technical Officer on long-term care with the WHO Regional Office for Europe, a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health and a Salzburg Global Seminar fellow. Her work focuses on innovation and service design in health and long-term care systems and on promoting equity in access to long-term care. Prior to joining WHO Europe, she has worked as a researcher and policy advisor at the European Centre for Social Welfare and Policy Research in Vienna and at Trinity College Dublin.

    • Manfred Huber , World Health Organization

      Manfred Huber joined WHO Regional Office for Europe in 2009, where he provided advice to Member States in Europe on the implementation of the Decade of Healthy Ageing, until his retirement in April 2023. His area of expertise is health and long-term care reform for healthy ageing; age-friendly environments and communities. He has authored several books on health and social services for ageing populations and has over 30 years of experience with international comparisons of health and social policy.

    • Sarah Louise Barber , World Health Organization

      Sarah Louise Barber is the Director of the WHO Centre for Health Development (the Kobe Center) in Kobe Hyogo, Japan. Prior to working with WHO, she was managing evaluation research at the University of California Berkeley's Institute of Business and Economic Research, and the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico. She has published widely on diverse topics in health economics and policy analysis, including the role of the private health care sector, conditional cash transfers, human resources, migration, and more.