Equity in the Provision of Long-Term Care: a Comparison of Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The objective of this paper is to analyse how different countries approach the objective of equity in the provision of long-term care. Explicitly or implicitly, welfare state definitions and social policy definitions include notions such as equity, justice or equality, theyr are even at the core of these definitions. Equity is widely accepted as an objective in social policy. And equity is an attractive label in social policy making. However, apart from a basic agreement on equity as an objective of the welfare state, we are far from reaching an agreement on what constitutes equity.