This study compared how older people use quality information to choose residential care providers in England, the Netherlands and Spain (Catalonia). The availability of information varies between each country, from detailed inspection and survey information in the Netherlands, through to a lack of publicly available information in Catalonia. We used semi-structured interviews and group workshops with older people, families and professionals to compare experiences of the decision-making process and quality information, and also to explore what quality information might be used in the future. We found that most aspects of the decision-making experience and preferences for future indicators were similar across the three countries. The use of quality information was minimal across all three, even in England and the Netherlands where information was widely available. Differences arose mainly from factors with the supply of care. Older people were most interested in the subjective experiences of other residents and relatives, rather than ‘hard’ objective indicators of aspects such as clinical care. We find that the amount of publicly available quality information does not in itself influence the decisions or the decision-making processes of older people and their carers. To improve the quality of decisions, more effort needs to be taken to increase awareness and to communicate quality in more accessible ways, including significant support from professionals and better design of quality information.

Concerns about the consequences of demographic ageing on the sustainability of the pension system has led to the adoption of reforms reducing pension expenditure. However, the impact of these reforms on pension adequacy is now coming under increasing scrutiny. Taking recent Spanish reform as an example, this paper analyses the extent to which fostering pension sustainability threatens pension adequacy. Using an extension of the DyPeS behavioural microsimulation model, results show that the introduction of mechanisms linking retirement pensions to the evolution of the social security budget balance has strong and negative effects on adequacy. The gains in sustainability are mainly driven by the significant fall in the benefit ratio (average pension to average wage), worsening the relative economic position of pensioners throughout forthcoming decades, reversing the past trend.

This paper investigates how retirement decisions, in interaction with demographic changes, impact on pension system sustainability. To do so, we introduce behaviour into a dynamic microsimulation model applied to the Spanish case. Speci cally, the retirement decision is modelled using a reduced-form survival model that provides information on retirement hazards, which are then used to calculate times to retirement within the microsimulation model. This model allows us to account for behavioural responses. For example, the behavioural reaction to the 2011 reform improves pension system sustainability, despite individuals opting to retire later to obtain higher bene ts. The positive e fect (increase in contributions and reduction in time spent in retirement) is greater than the negative e fect (increase in pension levels). Additionally, the model allows us to show how the positive I J M (2018) 11(2) 84-108 85 e fects of the education transition and higher rates of female and older worker participation contribute to reducing the negative impact of population ageing.

In this paper, we analyse the impact of population ageing on the sustainability and the intergenerational fairness of public fiscal policy in three selected European countries (Austria, France, and Spain). We use NTA and NTTA data, and introduce these data into a large-scale general equilibrium OLG model with realistic assumptions regarding demographic trends and changes in population structure. The results for sustainability show a sharp increase in the share of public expenditure to GDP for the main programmes of the welfare state. In the three countries analysed, public policies (e.g. education, health care, and pension benefits) redistribute income from younger individuals to older individuals. Our findings indicate that these policies redistribute more resources to older individuals in Spain and fewer resources to older individuals in Austria. We consider the effects of several reform scenarios, including simulations in which the statutory retirement age is raised and the tax base for financing health care expenditures are changed. We also describe the consequences of the population having a fixed level of educational attainment.