A COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN? LONG‐TERM HOME CARE UTILIZATION IN EUROPE
利用欧洲健康、老龄化与退休调查数据，研究正式与非正式居家护理的使用概率和数量，发现两者关系因护理类型而异，且临近死亡指标对护理使用有显著影响。
This paper investigates long-term home care utilization in Europe. Data from the first wave of the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) on formal (nursing care and paid domestic help) and informal care (support provided by relatives) are used to study the probability and the quantity of both types of care. The overall process is framed in a fully simultaneous equation system that takes the form of a bivariate two-part model where the reciprocal interaction between formal and informal care is estimated. Endogeneity and unobservable heterogeneity are addressed using a common latent factor approach. The analysis of the relative impact of age and disability on home care utilization is enriched by the use of a proximity to death (PtD) indicator built using the second wave of SHARE. All these indicators are important predictors of home care utilization. In particular, a strong significant effect of PtD is found in the paid domestic help and informal care models. The relationship between formal and informal care moves from substitutability to complementarity depending on the type of care considered, and the estimated effects are small in absolute size. This might call for a reconsideration of the effectiveness of incentives for informal care as instruments to reduce public expenditure for home care services.