Demand for Long-Term Care for Older People in England to 2031

How best to finance long-term care has been the subject of considerable debate in Britain. This article outlines the methodology and results of a model (developed by the Personal Social Services Research Unit) that makes projections of demand for long-term care for older people (aged 65 and older) to 2031. Key findings include: to keep pace with demographic pressures over the next thirty years, residential and nursing home places would nee to expand by around 65 per cent and numbers of hours of home care by around 48 per cent, assuming unchanged dependency rates; long-term care expenditure would need to rise by around 148 per cent in real terms between 1996 and 2031 to meet demographic pressures and allow for real rises in care costs of one per cent per year for social care and 1.5 per cent per year for health care; these projections are highly sensitive to the projected growth in the number of older people, to future dependency rates and to assumed real rises in the unit costs of care. However, they are less sensitive to future household composition. They assume no change in policy and make no allowance for changes in public expectations.