The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance-Issues and Practice ( IF 1.455 ) Pub Date : 2021-05-25 , DOI: 10.1057/s41288-021-00240-8 Katerina Gousia
Long-term care (LTC) is one of the largest financial risks faced by the elderly. Yet, it remains largely uninsured. This paper explores the relationship between cognitive abilities and private voluntary or supplementary long-term care insurance (LTCI) ownership as another possible factor contributing to the small size of the market. We used data from a European panel survey, which collects detailed information on both private insurance coverage and three indicators of cognitive abilities: numeracy, verbal fluency and memory skills. We find that memory, but not numeracy or verbal fluency, has a positive and statistically significant effect on the probability of owning private LTCI above and beyond other characteristics such as general education, family, risk factors, income and wealth. Fixed effects estimates show that a one-standard deviation increase in the recall measure score is associated with a 0.5 percentage point increase in the probability of holding insurance for the baseline sample and a 1 percentage point increase among the younger cohort. The findings suggest that cognitive limitations in LTCI decision-making are likely to be linked to information processing skills and can be an important factor affecting the expansion of the market that need to be taken into consideration in policy design.
中文翻译:
认知能力和长期护理保险:来自欧洲数据的证据
长期护理(LTC)是老年人面临的最大财务风险之一。但是,它基本上没有保险。本文探讨了认知能力与私人自愿或补充长期护理保险(LTCI)所有权之间的关系,这是造成市场规模较小的另一个可能因素。我们使用了来自欧洲专家小组调查的数据,该调查收集了有关私人保险范围和认知能力三个指标的详细信息:计算能力,语言流利性和记忆能力。我们发现,记忆能力对拥有私人LTCI的可能性具有积极的和统计学上的显着影响,但对算术或口头流利性却没有正面和统计学上的显着影响。固定效应估计表明,召回措施得分的一标准偏差增加与基准样本的持有保险概率增加0.5个百分点以及年轻队列中的增加1个百分点相关。研究结果表明,LTCI决策中的认知局限性可能与信息处理技能有关,并且可能是影响市场扩张的重要因素,在政策设计中需要考虑这一因素。