Simulating The Cost Of Social Care In An Ageing Population

Abstract

In this paper we present an agent-based model of the ageing UK population. The goal of this model is to integrate statistical demographic projections of the UK population with an agent-based platform that allows us to examine the interaction between population change and the cost of social care in an ageing population. The model captures the basic processes which affect the demand for and supply of social care, including fertility, mortality, health status, and partnership formation and dissolution. The mortality and fertility rates in this population are drawn from statistical demographic projections until 2050 based on UK population data from 1951 -2011. Results show that, in general, we expect the cost of social care in the UK to rise significantly as the population continues to age. An in-depth sensitivity analysis performed using Gaussian Process Emulators confirms that the level of care need within the population and the age of retirement have the most profound impact on the projected cost of social care.

Modelling social care provision in an agent-based framework with kinship networks

“…This updated version of the Linked Lives model presented in Silverman et al [17] has been rewritten from the ground up and substantially extended for greater detail and realism. The following features have been introduced: The population is composed of five socioeconomic status groups .Care supply is provided by an agent’s kinship network , a network of households which have a kinship relationship to the agent.Households allocate part of their income to care provision, which can be in the form of both informal and formal care. Government-funded social care is introduced, whose structure reflects that of public social care in the UK (with the exception of Scotland).A salary function implying an inverse relationship between the time taken off work to provide informal care and the agent’s hourly wage.Unmet social care needs affect the agents’ hospitalization probability and the associated healthcare costs.…”

Introduction

“…Chapter 11 focuses exclusively on a single model: the Linked Lives model of social care supply and demand (Noble et al 2012;Silverman et al 2013b). This model is a significant leap forward in complexity compared to the Wedding Doughnut, incorporating a simple economic system, spatial elements, partnership formation/dissolution, social care need and provision, and migration.…”

Model-Based Demography in Practice: II

“…This model is an agent-based, spatially-embedded platform in which simulated individuals live out their life-courses in a virtual space roughly modelled on UK geography (Silverman et al 2013). The version presented here is an extension of a previous model, dubbed the 'Linked Lives' model, which demonstrated the core components of this framework .…”

“…In this revision we linked these aspects with empirical data by making use of demographic data starting in the year 1951 (the date of the first UK census) (Silverman et al 2013). As with the Wedding Doughnut, we used age-specific mortality rates from the Human Mortality Database (2011), and fertility rates from the Office for National Statistics (1998) and Eurostat (2011).…”