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IIASA research report: Health and Elderly Care Expenditure in an Aging World

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) announces publication of the research report, Health and Elderly Care Expenditure in an Aging World, by Professor Leslie Mayhew. This report explores the consequences of population aging for the vital services of health and elderly care and considers the basic mechanisms fueling their growth.

While these expenditures are less economically significant than pensions, they still account for over 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) in developed countries and are expected to continue rising. The author projects health care and disability-related expenditures in both less developed and more developed countries, resulting in the following key conclusions:

• Aging will overtake population growth as the main demographic driver of health expenditure growth, but its effect will be less than that of technological and institutional factors.
• Health expenditure will expand rapidly in less developed countries to reach levels currently observed in more developed countries.
• The number of people with disabilities will grow substantially, but will level out in more developed countries by 2050, while the number of people with disabilities in all age groups will continue to grow in less developed countries. Despite this, most care for the disabled continues to be provided by the family and community, so projected increases in disability-related expenditure are modest.

The author, Professor Leslie Mayhew, from the Department of Geography, Birkbeck College, University of London, has collaborated with Landis MacKeller of IIASA's Social Security Reform Project since 1998 and was an associate research scholar at IIASA during the summer of 1999. He was formerly a senior civil servant in the Departments of Health and Social Security and a director of the Office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom.

To order a bound copy or to access the complete text of IIASA's research report RR-00-021 (47 pages), Health and Elderly Care Expenditure in an Aging World, please visit IIASA's publication web site at http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Publications. For further details on IIASA's Social Security Reform Project, please visit their web site at http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/SSR/.

IIASA is an independent, non-governmental, interdisciplinary research institution, which specializes in natural and social scientific research methods and models valued by policy makers, the scientific community and the public worldwide. IIASA is an international institution, with sponsoring member organizations in 15 countries. For further information, visit IIASA's web site at www.iiasa.ac.at.

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