Forecasting disability in Europe Seminar

Due to an ageing population and prolonged life expectancies the number of the very old is expected to increase substantially in the near future. A substantial rise in the number of disabled elderly is foreseen. To address policy questions related to the provision of health care services in an ageing population, increasing emphasis has been put on the future development of long-term care need.

In this talk multistate models are used to project future needs of long-term care in the Netherlands. Long-term care need is understood to mean 'numbers of persons with at least one limitation of activities of daily living (ADL-disability). We describe the procedure followed to project the number of disabled elderly using a multi-state demographic projection model, that distinguishes different groups of persons by ADL disability and by risk factor(s). As point of departure we used the population scenarios compiled by Eurostat (EUROPOP2008).

Due to lack of reliable data on incidence of disability, we used prevalence data to estimate the incidence rates (from SHARE). We compile projections for the period 2008-2060 for the Netherlands, based on assumptions of changes in the disability incidence, changes in smoking behaviour and the EUROPOP2008 population forecasts. The main outcome of the projections is the future number of ADL-disabled persons aged 65 and over.