IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/chosxx/v37y2022i4p511-536.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Housing wealth and aged care: asset-based welfare in practice in three OECD countries

Author

Listed:
  • Gavin A. Wood
  • Rachel Ong
  • Marietta E. A. Haffner

Abstract

The transition of the baby boomer bulge into old age and their increasing longevity will lift the numbers of elderly in residential aged care. Population ageing and associated fiscal pressures have motivated governments to shift responsibility for the financing of aged care to the individual. We consider policies that include owner-occupiers’ housing wealth and imputed rental incomes in means tests that determine co-contribution charges for residential aged care. Differences in how housing wealth is included in the residential aged care resource tests of three OECD countries – Australia, England and the Netherlands – are documented. We find some neglected equity implications as tenants in all three countries typically pay higher co-payments for their residential aged care than homeowners with similar wealth holdings. These outcomes are a consequence of the concessional treatment of owners’ housing equity stakes, and of wider significance given the growing importance of asset-based welfare strategies. England has relatively progressive asset and income tests that offer more limited concessions.

Suggested Citation

  • Gavin A. Wood & Rachel Ong & Marietta E. A. Haffner, 2022. "Housing wealth and aged care: asset-based welfare in practice in three OECD countries," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(4), pages 511-536, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:37:y:2022:i:4:p:511-536
    DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2020.1819966
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2020.1819966
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/02673037.2020.1819966?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:37:y:2022:i:4:p:511-536. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/chos20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.