Long-Term Care in Latin America and the Caribbean?

Abstract

work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-IGO BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/ legalcode) and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose, as provided below. No derivative work is allowed.Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license.Following a peer review process, and with previous written consent by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a revised version of this work may also be reproduced in any academic journal, including those indexed by the American Economic Association's EconLit, provided that the IDB is credited and that the author(s) receive no income from the publication. Therefore, the restriction to receive income from such publication shall only extend to the publication's author(s). With regard to such restriction, in case of any inconsistency between the Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license and these statements, the latter shall prevail.Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license. AbstractThis paper discusses theoretical and practical issues related to long-term care (LTC) services in Latin America. Demand for these services will rise as the region undergoes a swift demographic transition from its currently young population to a rapidly aging one, especially since the region's aging cohorts are more prone to experience a decline in their functional and physical abilities than elderly people elsewhere in the world. We argue that private insurance markets are ill-equipped to provide coverage to meet the need for LTC, while the amount of personal savings required to afford self-insurance is prohibitively high. We study how developed economies have dealt with the issue of LTC and pay special attention to the most salient features of their LTC programs. We then direct the discussion to Latin America, where LTC may not be an immediate priority, but governments are likely to encourage the development of LTC programs as demand for them steadily grows. In particular, policymakers are probably going to focus initially on LTC programs for the poor and the vulnerable, for whom LTC affordability is a greater problem. We therefore study how basic elements of policy design affect costeffectiveness of LTC programs by means of a formal model. Our study shows that propoor programs are more cost effective when people have the option to receive cash subsidies, and the availability of in-kind and in-cash choices reduces program costs overall. We argue that our findings are natural starting points to start thinking about LTC program development in the region.Keywords...

Dependency Change with Aging and Associated Factors in Uruguay: A Cohort Study

“…Developed countries have already gone through these demographic changes and have therefore planned, implemented, and reformed their policies to deal with problems associated with dependency of the older population (Matus-López, 2015). However, only some Latin American countries have implemented measures to address these problems, in particular, the ones associated with increased dependency to care or support (Galiani et al, 2017;Matus-López, 2015;Matus-López & Rodríguez-Modroño, 2014). Uruguay stands out among Latin American countries due to the implementation of a new Long-Term Care (LTC) program within the framework of the National Care System (NCS) initiated in 2015.…”