2013 Volume 24 Issue E2 Pages 74-90
In the 10 years since its introduction in Japan, long-term care insurance has already become an indispensable part of the Japanese social insurance system for most families. Partly for this reason, economists have actively researched how that insurance has changed the way our families and institutions care for the elderly and the economic consequences of those changes. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of their findings of effects in four major areas, namely, on family caregivers' burdens, on labor supply, on the service quality of providers, and on social hospitalization. At the same time, we pay close attention to the quality of the data used and to the estimation methods. Through our analyses, we hope to identify the issues that are still waiting for further research.
