Projecting the future cost of the French elderly disabled allowance using a microsimulation model

Confronted with an ageing population, developed countries are facing the challenge of providing care to a growing number of disabled elderly people. Knowing how many they will be and, given the current pensions and welfare systems, how much it will cost to care for them is crucial to policymakers. The INSEE pensions microsimulation tool (called Destinie) was extended in 2011 to elderly disability, in preparation for a reform of the funding of elderly disability in France. Microsimulation at the individual level allows to take into account expected changes in the distribution of variables that influence the process under study. It also allows to simulate allowances based on complex, non-linear scales that require calculation at the individual level. This document describes the implementation method and the results of the forecasts. First, on the characteristics of the disabled elderly and presence of caregivers. Then, several alternative scenarios are studied and yield a range of estimates of the future cost of the allowance for elderly disability, ranging from 0.54% of GDP in the most optimistic scenario to 0.71% of GDP in the most pessimistic one.