NordForsk Grant to Study Sustainable Elder Care Systems
Aline Bütikofer has received NordForsk funding for her new project on how demographic shifts, health needs, and policy shape the delivery of elder care and the balance of responsibilities between families and the state.
As the Nordic population ages, the pressure on both public services and informal caregivers is increasing.
This research project, lead by Professor Aline Bütikofer, examines the key factors influencing elder care demand and supply in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The goal is to develop evidence-based policy recommendations for sustainable, cost-effective, and high-quality care systems. This is done by addressing three core questions:
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Demand for Care: How much and what type of care do Nordic citizens need, and how does cost affect their choices?
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Supply of Care: How can Nordic countries recruit and retain skilled care workers to ensure a stable workforce?
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Policy Framework: What policies balance costs and benefits for sustainable elder care?
To explore these issues, the team will combine administrative data with survey experiments that reveal the preferences of care recipients, families, and elder care workers. Additionally, they exploit policy reforms across the three countries to estimate causal effects and develop a framework to evaluate the welfare effects of different elder care systems to provide evidence-based policy advice on providing equitable and efficient care.
The project is based at FAIR, the Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality at the Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), and is part of NordForsk’s programme on health and welfare services for the elderly.