Long-term care insurance: The French example

With the ageing of population and high cost of long-term care, long-term care insurance has strongly expanded in France in recent decades. This article provides an overview of a recent empirical work [1] studying the determinants of the demand for insurance covering long-term care on the French market using cross-sectional data from the newly developed Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) database. It shows that long-term care insurance is purchased to preserve bequests and to protect families in the event of disability. Risk behaviours as well as experience of disability, are also shown to play a significant role in explaining the demand for long-term care insurance in France.