FINANCING LONGEVITY: The Economics of Pensions, Health, Long-term Care and Disability Insurance

The Asia Health Policy Program at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), in collaboration with scholars from Stanford Health Policy's Center on Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the Next World Program, is holding its third annual conference on the economics of ageing. The conference is one of several activities planned in 2017 to mark the 10^th anniversary of the Asia Health Policy Program.

The triumph of longevity can pose a challenge to the fiscal integrity of public and private pension systems and other social support programs disproportionately used by older adults. High-income countries offer lessons – frequently cautionary tales – for low- and middle-income countries about how to design social protection programs to be sustainable in the face of population ageing. Technological change and income inequality interact with population ageing to threaten the sustainability and perceived fairness of conventional financing for many social programs. Promoting longer working lives and savings for retirement are obvious policy priorities; but in many cases the fiscal challenges are even more acute for other social programs, such as insurance systems for medical care, long-term care, and disability. Reform of entitlement programs is also often politically difficult, further highlighting how important it is for developing countries putting in place comprehensive social security systems to take account of the macroeconomic implications of population ageing.

The objective of the conference is to explore the economics of ageing from the perspective of sustainable financing for longer lives. The conference will bring together researchers to present recent empirical and theoretical research on a range of topics in this area.

The first full day of the conference – April 24 – is open to the public. The lunchtime keynote speech on the second day of the conference – April 25 – is also open to the public; the remaining portions of that day are reserved for panelists only to encourage candid conversation in a closed-door setting.

Conference Agenda

April 24

7:45                             Breakfast

8:25                             Welcome         Gi-Wook Shin, Stanford University

                                                           Karen Eggleston, Stanford University

Session I: Long-term Care and Intergenerational Support

Chair: Gopi Shah Goda, Stanford University

8:30 – 9:30                   “Housing Assets and Access to Long Term Care Services and Supports: Evidence from the Housing Bubble Burst”

                                                            Richard Frank, Harvard University

                                                            Discussant: Tom Davidoff, University of British Columbia

9:30 – 10:30               “The Demand for Long-Term Care Insurance in Canada”

                                                            Pierre-Carl Michaud, HEC Montréal and RAND

                                                            Discussant: Chris Tonetti, Stanford Graduate School of Business

10:30 – 10:45              Coffee break

10:45 – 11:45             “The Price of the East Asian Miracle: Generational Cultural Shift and Elderly Suicide”

                                                            Hyejin Ku, University College London

                                                            Discussant: Hongbin Li, Tsinghua University and Stanford University

Session II:

Co-Chairs: John Shoven and Karen Eggleston, Stanford University

11:45 – 13:45              Lunch

Keynote panel: "The policy challenges of financing longevity: Perspectives from Japan and the US"

Hirotaka Unami, Senior Director for Policy Planning and Research, Minister's Secretariat, Ministry of Finance, Japan

Olivia S. Mitchell, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor, as well as Professor of Insurance/Risk Management and Business Economics/Policy, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Session III: Financial Planning and Health

Chair: David Canning, Harvard University

14:00 – 15:00              “Cognitive Decline and Household Financial Outcomes at Older Ages”

                                                            Marco Angrisani, University of Southern California

                                                            Discussant: Kathleen McGarry, UCLA

15:00 – 15:15              Break

15:15 – 16:15             “From Compression to Expansion of Morbidity: Upcoming Challenges for Health Care and Long Term Care in China”

                                                            Bei Lu, University of New South Wales

                        Discussant: Wang Feng, Fudan University and UC Irvine

16:40                           Closing

Apri1 25

11:45 – 13:00              Lunch

                                    Policy challenges of financing longevity: Perspectives from Singapore

Kelvin Bryan Tan, Ministry of Health, Singapore