Financial support for long-term elderly care and household saving behaviour

Abstract

In 2002, Scotland introduced a set of reforms which increased the financial support for long-term elderly care. We study how these reforms affected households' propensity to save. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we find that the policies reduced the household saving rate by 1.9 percentage points. This amounts to an annual reduction in saving of £503. The estimated effect is heterogeneous; the effect is particularly strong among potential care givers (head of household aged in their 40s) and potential care recipients less likely to receive informal care (singles older than 65 living alone).