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Long term-care protection for older persons
recognized training may keep their licenses open in the home country, in order to facilitate their return home one day. Such people may be included in official statistics of the home-
country, even though these workers are not available back home. In the destination countries, not all migrants provide care work in the formal sector of the economy, and
therefore will not be counted in national statistics.
With these limitations, we are estimating the number of LTC workers available in the countries observed.
When assessing LTC needs we consider that these needs most often arise in the course of frailty usually related to old age or very old age. Across high-income countries,
the onset of old age is mostly defined at age 65. These considerations, however, apply to a more general concept of social security. With regard to the need for LTC services,
observed patterns of need and service use suggest that the relevant age group is older and therefore, in reality, smaller. For instance, the prevalence of dementia doubles with every
five-year increase after the age of 65, starting from a prevalence of about 1.5 per cent in the age group 65-69. This is highly relevant because dementia is one of the major causes of
disability in later life Prince Jackson, 2009. Against this background, this report uses the age bracket of 65+ for any assessment.
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3. Assessment of global coverage and access deficits in LTC for older persons
Today, we find that a majority of the global population aged 65 and older lives in the Asia-Pacific region 53 per cent or 300 million persons. Elsewhere, 23 per cent
131 million people live in Europe and 17 per cent 94 million older persons in the Americas. The lowest proportion and number of persons aged 65+ live in Africa
amounting to just 7 per cent or 39 million persons Figure 3.
Figure 3. Global population aged 65+ in per cent of world population aged 65+ by region, 2011
Source: World Bank, 2015 population data from 2013.
LTC recipients are particularly found within this group of persons aged 65 and older. Their coverage and access to LTC depends on a variety of conditions, including the
existence of inclusive national legislation to ensure universal coverage as a prerequisite for equity in access to LTC. Furthermore, such legislation should provide for entitlements to
adequate benefits for all in need – be they services, cash or other forms of benefits – that
are financed with a view to burden-sharing and avoiding financial hardship. Finally, quality services and cash benefits must be available when needed and not be constraint due
to underfunding or the absence of professional long-term care workers. Thus, it is important that national legislation or legal LTC coverage results in affordability,
availability and sufficient funding of quality services and other benefits for those in need of LTC. The following section assesses these criteria at global, regional and national
levels.
3.1. Legal coverage gaps: Globally, universal LTC coverage of older persons is the exception, exclusion is the rule
To provide equitable access to LTC services through social protection for all in need, the whole population should be covered by national legislation according to international
standards such as R202. This can be achieved through mandatory coverage in social LTC
7 17
53 23
Africa 56 countries Americas 44 countries
Asia and the Pacific 65 countries Europe 49 countries
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Long term-care protection for older persons
insurances or universal tax funded systems such as national LTC systems or cash benefits delivered through social assistance providing rights to access to needed LTC.
Against this background, legal coverage is defined as the percentage of the total population in a country that is protected by national legislation providing entitlements to
access a LTC scheme or system. Thus, coverage of small pockets of the population at the discretion of communities or district governments or coverage by private LTC insurance
schemes found in some countries are not taken into account in the following. This is also due to the scarce data on coverage rates available for such arrangements and the fact that
they usually provide relatively low levels of coverage.
3.1.1. In most countries persons aged 65 and over have no rights to LTC
Unfortunately, quantitative information on LTC coverage is very scarce; this is mostly due to the fact that very few countries consider it a public need to provide LTC at
all and have developed related legislation. The most complete and reliable data are available from countries with separate universal coverage schemes or systems such as
Germany or Japan: In these countries the total population – 100 per cent – is covered.
In other countries, such as South Africa, there are regulations establishing a right to social assistance which cover some LTC provisions based on means-testing. In these
countries only persons that fall under certain income and wealth thresholds enjoy legal coverage for LTC. Thus, older people with income or wealth above the thresholds have to
first use up their savings and assets – sometimes even support of their relatives is taken
into account – before being entitled to services. Thus, they are forced to become “poor”
before they become eligible for LTC. Such legislation results in the fact that the majority of the population is deprived of their right to LTC as they do not fall under these
conditions.
Figure 4 shows the current situation regarding deficits in legal LTC coverage towards universal coverage of the total population based on national legislation.
Figure 4. Deficits in legal LTC coverage towards universal coverage based on national legislation, 2015
total population, percentages
Source: ILO estimates 2015, World Bank, 2015 population data in 2013.
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We observe that:
In many countries of all regions and at all income levels, 100 per cent of the population is lacking legal coverage for LTC. These countries include in:
– Africa: Algeria, Ghana and Nigeria; – The Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia and Mexico;
– Asia and the Pacific: India, Indonesia and Thailand; – Europe: Slovakia and Turkey.
The regions with the lowest coverage rates are Africa and Latin America. In Latin America no country has established national legislation to provide LTC coverage.
Legal entitlements to LTC services are mainly present in high-income countries, while governments in most low and middle-income countries have not established
legal entitlements to public LTC services.
Very few high-income countries provide universal legal coverage. In Europe these are for example Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Luxemburg and
Sweden and in Asia countries such as Japan and South Korea.
While there is globally an extreme bias in the provision of legal LTC entitlements towards high-income countries, by far not all high-income countries provide legal
coverage for LTC for example Chile does not have any national legislation.
Very limited, non-universal LTC coverage based on means-tested approaches that limit publicly funded LTC to the poorest parts of the population is provided in many
high-income and some upper middle-income countries, such as:
– in Africa: South Africa; – in the Americas: United States;
– in Asia and the Pacific: Australia, China and New Zealand; – in Europe: Austria, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel,
Italy Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Based on these results, the assessment of national legislation reveals that a large proportion of the global population lacks the right to LTC and remains without legal
coverage in national legislation. In fact, more than 48 per cent of the world’s population is
not covered by any national legislation and another 46.3 per cent is largely excluded from coverage due to narrow means-testing regulations. Only, 5.6 per cent of the global
population lives in countries that provide universal LTC coverage Figure 5.
