Shang Wu, Hazel Bateman, Ralph Stevens and Susan Thorp
We examine stated preferences for long-term care insurance that pays extra income instead of reimbursing care costs. Our results show that long-term care income insurance is likely to provide two important benefits to aging societies. First, it can facilitate flexible, informal, long-term care – seniors who plan to rely on family members for extensive care find income insurance particularly attractive. Second, it can enhance risk-pooling – if long-term care income insurance were available, many seniors would release funds set aside to self-insure against the risk of needing long-term care to purchase additional longevity insurance. Our results also rule out adverse selection into the long-term care income insurance product on objective risk factors. However, participants who subjectively rate themselves at higher risk of needing long-term care will select into insurance, indicating either adverse selection that is based on private information or subjective mismeasurement of future care costs.
Keywords: Long-term care insurance; aged care; informal care; retirement incomes; annuity experiment
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