The mixed economy of long-term care in England, Germany, Italy, and Spain

This paper is based on a European Commission-funded study of future long-term care expenditure in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. It investigates how sensitive long-term care expenditure is to assumptions about demographic trends, future dependency rates, care arrangements, and real inflation. Macro-simulation projection models for each country reflecting the national characteristics of the care system were used to make comparable projections based on a set of common assumptions. This central case was then used as a point of comparison in order to explore the sensitivity of the models to alternative scenarios about key determinants of future expenditure. The proportion of GDP spent on longterm care is projected to more than double between 2000 and 2050 in each country under the central case. However, projections are highly sensitive to changes in the above assumptions. -- Der Beitrag beruht auf einer EU-finanzierten Studie zur zukünftigen Entwicklung der Ausgaben für Langzeitpflege in Deutschland, Italien, Spanien und dem Vereinigten Königreich. Untersucht wird die Sensitivität der Ausgabenentwicklung hinsichtlich unterschiedlicher Annahmen zur demographischen Entwicklung, zur Pflegebedürftigkeit, zur Pflegeform und zu den Kosten der Pflege. Mittels nationaler Makrosimulationsmodelle, die die länderspezifischen Pflegesysteme berücksichtigen, wird ein auf gemeinsamen Annahmen basierendes Grundmodell berechnet, das den Referenzpunkt der nachfolgenden Sensitivitätsanalyse darstellt. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich in allen Untersuchungsländern, dass sich der Anteil des BIP, der für Pflegeleistungen aufgewandt wird, von 2000 bis 2050 mehr als verdoppelt. Allerdings sind diese Ergebnisse sehr sensitiv in bezug auf Veränderungen der genannten Annahmen.

Intertemporal Welfare Dynamics

human development, technology

Health of Immigrants in European countries.

The health of older immigrants can have important consequences for needed social support and demands placed on health systems. This paper examines health differences between immigrants and the nativeborn populations aged 50 years and older in 11 European countries. We examine differences in functional ability, disability, disease presence and behavioral risk factors, for immigrants and non-immigrants using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) database. Among the 11 European countries, migrants generally have worse health than the native population. In these countries, there is a little evidence of the “healthy migrant” at ages 50 years and over. In general, it appears that growing numbers of immigrants may portend more health problems in the population in subsequent years.Immigrants, Mortality, Health, Disability,SHARE.

The male to female ratio at birth

The factors that influence the male to female ratio at birth are legion. Males are usually born in excess and stress decreases the ratio while wellbeing and good health tends to increase it. This paper reviews the multitudes of factors that have been implicated as affecting this ratio, from historical times to date.peer-reviewe

Outbreak of encephalitic listeriosis in red-legged partridges (Alectoris rufa)

An outbreak of neurological disease was investigated in red-legged partridges between 8 and 28 days of age. Clinical signs included torticollis, head tilt and incoordination and over an initial eight day period approximately 30–40 fatalities occurred per day. No significant gross post mortem findings were detected. Histopathological examination of the brain and bacterial cultures followed by partial sequencing confirmed a diagnosis of encephalitis due to Listeria monocytogenes. Further isolates were obtained from follow-up carcasses, environmental samples and pooled tissue samples of newly imported day-old chicks prior to placement on farm. These isolates had the same antibiotic resistance pattern as the isolate of the initial post mortem submission and belonged to the same fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism (fAFLP) subtype. This suggested that the isolates were very closely related or identical and that the pathogen had entered the farm with the imported day-old chicks, resulting in disease manifestation in partridges between 8 and 28 days of age. Reports of outbreaks of encephalitic listeriosis in avian species are rare and this is to the best of our knowledge the first reported outbreak in red-legged partridges

The effect of education on adult mortality and disability: a global perspective

Contemporary research primarily in the West offers a strong case for the relationship between formal education and adult health; more education, measured either by level completed or years of schooling, is associated, often in a stepwise fashion, with lower levels of mortality, morbidity and disability. In this study, we attempt to provide a global assessment of that relationship as it pertains to adult disability, using sample data from 70 countries that participated in the World Health Survey. In each of five regions and some of the largest countries outside the West we find that an increase in formal education is associated with lower levels of disability in both younger and older adults. Using the regional education-based differentials and several estimates of growth in education levels, we project levels of disability to 2050 to estimate the health and human capital benefits obtained from investments in education. We find that considering education in the population projection consistently shows lower prevalence of disability in the future, and that scenarios with better education attainment lead to lower prevalence. It is apparent that the educational dividend identified in our projection scenario should be an important policy goal, which, if anything, should be more speedily advanced in those countries and regions that have the greatest need.

"Promoting Equality Through an Employment of Last Resort Policy"

To put an economy on an equitable growth path, economic development must be based on social efficiency, equity, and job creation. It has been shown that unemployment has far-reaching effects, all leading to an inequitable distribution of well-being. But many economists assume that unemployment tends toward a natural rate below which it cannot go without creating inflation. The paper considers a particular employment strategy: a government job creation program, such as an employment guarantee or employer-of-last-resort scheme, that would satisfy the noninflationary criteria. The paper analyzes the international experience of government job creation programs, with particular emphasis on the cases of Argentina and India. We conclude by considering the application of an employer-of-last-resort policy to the developing world and as a vehicle to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Climate change, forest conservation and science: A case study of New Zealand, 1860s-1920

To most of its European settlers, New Zealand was a land blessed by Providence. A temperate climate and year-round rainfall, easy availability of land and myriad work opportunities attracted many to the new colony. Climate and health figured prominently in migration considerations and many writers took delight in pointing out, as propagandist John Ward did to intending migrants in 1839, that in New Zealand: A never-failing moisture is dispersed over the country by the clouds which collect on the mountain-tops, without the occurrence of rainy seasons, beyond storms of a few days’ duration. This refreshing moisture, combined with the influence of the sea-breezes, renders the climate very favourable to the health, and development, of the human frame. And vegetation is, from the same cause, highly luxuriant, and the verdure almost perpetual

The cultural, ethnic and linguistic classification of populations and neighbourhoods using personal names

There are growing needs to understand the nature and detailed composition of ethnicgroups in today?s increasingly multicultural societies. Ethnicity classifications areoften hotly contested, but still greater problems arise from the quality and availabilityof classifications, with knock on consequences for our ability meaningfully tosubdivide populations. Name analysis and classification has been proposed as oneefficient method of achieving such subdivisions in the absence of ethnicity data, andmay be especially pertinent to public health and demographic applications. However,previous approaches to name analysis have been designed to identify one or a smallnumber of ethnic minorities, and not complete populations.This working paper presents a new methodology to classify the UK population andneighbourhoods into groups of common origin using surnames and forenames. Itproposes a new ontology of ethnicity that combines some of its multidimensionalfacets; language, religion, geographical region, and culture. It uses data collected atvery fine temporal and spatial scales, and made available, subject to safeguards, at thelevel of the individual. Such individuals are classified into 185 independentlyassigned categories of Cultural Ethnic and Linguistic (CEL) groups, based on theprobable origins of names. We include a justification for the need of classifyingethnicity, a proposed CEL taxonomy, a description of how the CEL classification wasbuilt and applied, a preliminary external validation, and some examples of current andpotential applications