The analysis aims to describe processes of demographic and epidemiological change, as well as health status self-assessment in selected Central and Eastern Europe countries (CEECs), including both the new member states and the candidate countries. The analysis is presented in the context of the use of medical services and the structure of services used. Special attention is given to those demographic and epidemiological changes that have direct impact on the frequency of medical services used and, as such, determine increases in health care costs.

The report gives a brief overview of the demographic situation and recent trends in Estonia during the last 10 years. A current picture of the morbidity and health status of the population is presented, wherein the most important mortality and morbidity issues are discussed along with basic data concerning the Estonian health care system, its financing and utilisation patterns.

The objective of this report is to analyse the prevalence of good and poor health in Poland and the impact of self-assessed health on the use of health care services. Special attention is given to the impact of ageing on health status and the utilisation of health care. In addition, other social and economic factors that underpin health status and drive the utilisation of health care services are described. The analysis differentiates utilisation by type of medical service, including primary care, consultations with specialists and hospital care.

HIV/AIDS remains one of the most important communicable diseases in Europe, with over 20,000 individuals becoming infected each year – mostly young people and people of working age. It is an infection associated with serious morbidity, high costs of treatment and care, significant mortality and shortened life expectancy. In this Commentary, published to mark World AIDS Day (December 1st), CEPS Research Fellow Svetla Tsolova argues that active involvement of business is critically important in any serious attempts to address the spread of HIV/AIDS.

This paper presents a method for taking advantage of labour market transitions to identify the effects of financial incentives on employment decisions. The framework used is very flexible and by imposing few theoretical assumptions it allows us to extend the modelled sample relative to structural models. The authors take advantage of this flexibility to include disabled persons in the model and to jointly analyse the behaviour of disabled and non-disabled persons. A great deal of attention is paid to the appropriate modelling of financial incentives in the labour market.

This background paper begins with a discussion of the overall goal of promoting healthy and active ageing, followed by three sections that compare developments in the EU and US in the following key areas: 1) Enhancing independence by receiving care at home and in the community as much as possible; 2) Identifying sources of quality LTC services, including supporting family caregivers, promoting consumer-directed approaches to services, and developing the capacity of the LTC workforce; and 3) Ensuring sustainable financing of LTC systems.

Many studies document that women with children tend to earn lower wages than women without children (a shortfall known as the ‘child penalty’ or ‘family gap’). Despite the existence of several hypotheses about the causes of the child penalty, much about the gap in wages remains unexplained. This study explores the premise that mothers might substitute income for advantageous, non-pecuniary job characteristics.

This paper analyses the health expenditure profile by age and gender of survivors and deceased in four Italian regions. Per capita spending on the deceased constantly diminishes after middle age. The ratio between per capita expenditures on deceased and survivors by age shows a downward trend after about 40 years. Although we chose four regions situated in the North, Centre and South of Italy, we may conclude that there are no significant differences among them with respect to health costs near death, in spite of the wide regional gap and the different Regional Health Service models.

More than half way into the decade, it is clear that the EU will fall short of reaching its ambitious goal to make the EU the ‘most competitive economy’ by 2010. This contribution looks at an aspect that is often forgotten: namely the link between skills and employment, a central element in the Lisbon goal. It shows that the key problem of Europe in terms of employment is not so much the structure of its labour markets, but the insufficient skill levels of its population.

This paper studies the determinants of the retirement transitions of Europeans and focuses on the impact of social security systems on retirement behaviour. The analysis uses the first eight waves (1994-2001) of the European Community Household Panel. Based on these survey data, option values – which express, for each retirement age, the trade-off between retiring now and keeping the option open for some later retirement date – are constructed for each sampled individual in three countries: Finland, Belgium and Germany.

A question increasingly raised in recent years is whether the trend towards longer life expectancy has been accompanied by comparable increases in the expectancy of life in good health (active or disability-free life expectancy). Formulating an answer to this question is of essential importance for projecting health expenditure and for forecasting retirement patterns over the coming decades. The AGIR research project aimed essentially at exploring all available information to illustrate whether people are not only living longer but also ageing in better health.