Determinants of Policy Response: The Case of the Partnership Long-Term Care Insurance Program

Building on the findings of Lin and Prince (2013), we analyze several additional potential determinants of response to the partnership long-term care (PLTC) program, in addition to wealth. The determinants we consider are bequest motives, financial literacy, and program awareness. We find mild evidence that intent to bequest influences individual purchases of the partnership program. However, we find strong evidence that program awareness is necessary for response while financial literacy notably increases responsiveness. We also find that, even with these additional controls, a difference in response across wealth levels persists, suggesting that Medicaid crowd-out is still important in determining uptake of this program. These findings suggest that increasing response to the program among the middle class (the stated target group) requires increased education about the program’s benefits and increased efforts to create awareness of the program existence, at least among the middle class.