Ageing Polulations: More care or later care?

An ageing society is characterised by an increasing median age of the population. The purpose of this chapter is to document the existing knowledge about the association between population ageing and health care expenditure, and to supplement this overview by a summary of our original research. Studies found in the literature are either based on data from a single country with individuals as the unit of observation or from a number of countries with aggregate data at country level. While different studies show different results due to differences in methods and data, the general impression is that ageing as such can be expected only to a cause modest increase in health care expenditure per capita in the future. This conclusion is supported by our own empirical study, based on 15 EU countries.