Population ageing and long-term care: the family-welfare state balance revisited

Population ageing represents fundamental challenges for future long-term care. Needs threaten to exceed the resources of the family, the welfare state and other caregivers. Recent demographic trends and the responding changes in healthcare policy may have introduced new forms of social inequalities in care provision, which conflict with other priority goals such as a fair distribution of public services and equal opportunities for women and men. This motivates a renewed interest in exploring the interacti on between formal and informal care. The present project will describe the needs for long-term care in different local contexts, analyse how caregiving is shared by the family, the welfare state and others, and evaluate the risks of new social inequalitie s in care provision. The project is organised along a conceptual model that distinguishes the following three steps: (1) mapping out variation in needs and potential for family care; (2) investigating actual care exchanges; and (3) describing the outcomes of these interactions for care providers and recipients. Its empirical basis is the LOGG and NorLAG surveys supplied with contextual data on municipalities and qualitative interviews. NorLAG is the first longitudinal ageing study of some format in Norway and has panel data from two waves (2002 and 2007). The second wave is embedded in LOGG, which is an international comparative study, with nationally representative samples aged 18+. The multi-purpose and multi-disciplinary nature of the data provides the possibility to analyse the relationships between needs, motivations, and opportunities on the one hand, with actual care exchanges and outcomes on the other, across different contexts. Need configurations also include family members who are not fully cap able of self care due to dementia. An ambition of the project is to inform policies that will support equal access to, and a fair distribution of, public benefits in the area of long-term care.