Social welfare policies


91 - 120 of 189
23 December 2006

This is the final report of Work Package 3 of the AHEAD project, undertaken by the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) at the University of Kent. This Work Package has aimed at providing estimations, based on the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), of annual probabilities of transition between health states, including two states regarded as absorbing: permanent institutionalisation and mortality. The purpose of this work is to serve as a building block for estimating healthy life expectancy and forecasting the future health expenditure needs of populations.

22 December 2006

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between ageing and the development in the aggregate health care expenditure in EU countries on a macroeconomic level when economic and institutional variables are included. The results of the model will be used to extrapolate the total health care expenditure for the next 10 years.

07 December 2006

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.

06 December 2006

Not unlike other countries in Europe, Bulgaria has been subject to the steady process of population ageing, partly owing to the well-established downward trend in birth rates over the last several decades. In the past 15 years, this trend has been accompanied by the consequences of rising emigration, which has primarily involved young and active persons. As a result of the continual process of depopulation and an increase in population ageing, Bulgaria has one of the larger shares of older persons in Europe.

06 December 2006

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.

06 December 2006

Expenditure on medical treatment has tended to rise as a proportion of national income throughout the European Union. A particular concern is that with an ageing population and therefore the prospect of more elderly persons, the pressures on expenditure for health care will increase further. The Ageing, Health Status and Determinants of Health Expenditure (AHEAD) project has aimed at refining existing estimates of the links between ageing, reported states of health and use of medical services.

06 December 2006

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.

06 December 2006

Over the last 15 years, dramatic changes have been underway in the Slovak Republic in terms of both the health of the population and healthcare provision. This study provides information and key findings on the morbidity, health status and utilisation of healthcare services in the Slovak Republic.

01 December 2006

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.

09 October 2006

Estimates of the labour supply effects of recent UK reforms in the area of direct taxes and benefits show that policy can have a significant influence on the level of employment. We confirm this in a simulation of an in-work support system introduced into the German tax and benefit system. Our simulation results suggest that introducing in-work tax credits in Germany would increase the employment of single individuals by over 100,000 but it would simultaneously reduce the labour supply of individuals in couples by about 70,000.

09 October 2006

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.

26 September 2006

Globalisation has become a catch-all term imbuing public discussions with a sense of urgency about something that often cannot even be properly identified. This literature review presents an outline of arguments about what globalisation actually can mean, how to measure it and how to face it.

14 September 2006

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.

13 September 2006

The Lisbon strategy of 2000 sets the ambitious goal (among others) of achieving an employment rate of 70% overall, 60% for women and 50% for older workers within the EU-15 by 2010. Five years later, labour market participation has increased somewhat (overall from 62.5% in 1999 to 64.3% in 2003), but remains disappointingly low in the EU-15 (and even lower for the EU-25).

23 August 2006

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.

24 July 2006

The 10 new member states that joined the European Union in May 2004 have increased the population of the EU-15 by 20% and together account for almost 16.4% of the total EU-25 population. The current ageing of the population in the EU-15 has highlighted other challenges besides the well-known problems of financing pension and health care systems. It has also highlighted the risks of a rise in the dependent elderly population and the need to adjust social welfare systems accordingly.

18 May 2006

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.

01 February 2006

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.

01 February 2006

In the economic policy debate it is often stated that population ageing will lead to huge increases in the age-related components of public expenditure – primarily pensions and health care. This paper analyses a factor that may, at least partly, alleviate the fear that increased life expectancy will accelerate the rise in health-care spending: namely the fact that independent of decedent age, the bulk of per capita health-care costs are concentrated in the last years of life (the so-called ‘mortality-related’ costs).

01 August 2005

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.

01 August 2005

Is health good for the economy of the European Union? This study reviews an extensive body of research and policy documents from high-income countries encompassing cost-of-illness studies; the impact of health at the individual and household level on labour market outcomes, education and saving; the impact of health on the level and the growth rate of national income; and the welfare impact of health. Based on the available evidence, the introductory question can be answered with a resounding ‘yes’: health is good for the economy in the European Union.

01 July 2005

This paper explores the consequences of pension reforms in Western Europe in a world economy setting. Whereas various economic and social consequences of population ageing have been investigated in OECD countries, very few analyses have explicitly taken the worldwide aspect of the problem into account. In order to do so, this report relies on the latest version of the INGENUE World Model (2).

01 July 2005

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.

01 July 2005

This study aims at highlighting the importance of social integration for the wellbeing of dependent elderly persons living at home. This question is important because, as we can observe, social activities are not a priority for social policies regarding the dependent elderly in Europe. Here it is shown that social activities and contacts improve the wellbeing of the dependent elderly.