Impact of the introduction of the social long-term care insurance in Germany on financial security assessment in case of long-term care need

Abstract

The discussion concerning long-term care insurance in Germany barely exceeds the financial state of the social system. The view of the insured involved is largely ignored. This paper analyses the effect of the introduction of compulsory long-term care insurance in 1995 in Germany on the perception of financial security when needing long-term care. Using different regression techniques on a subset of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data, we show that the introduction led to a general positive shift of the assessment. Furthermore, experience with long-term care had no significant effect before the introduction but a positive effect afterwards. Also, the perception of financial security is found to be increasing with income at both times with similar magnitudes. © 2010 The International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics.