Comparative modeling of long-term care in hours: Parameter estimation for microWELT

This paper describes a novel method for the comparative estimation of long-term care needs, care arrangements and care gaps. Our approach generalizes an Austrian administrative procedure for the assessment of care needs and uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to quantify the demand for and supply of long-term care in hours, distinguishing between care provided in nursing homes, formal home care, informal care by spouses and other informal care. The resulting estimates serve as parameters to introduce long-term care into the dynamic microsimulation model microWELT. The method developed in this paper thus provides the basis for long-term projections and policy scenarios for the long-term care sector, considering major socio-demographic trends such as population ageing, fertility decline and educational expansion.