Abstract
We developed a microsimulation model, Care & WorkMOD, to estimate the economic costs of early exit from the labour force, both for informal carers and the government, from 2015 to 2030. In this paper, we describe the methods used to create the model Care & WorkMOD, and the sources of data and model assumptions. Care & WorkMOD is based on the unit record data of people aged 15-64 years in the three Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Surveys of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC) 2003, 2009 and 2012. Population and the labour force projections from the 2015 Intergenerational Report and the outputs of an Australian microsimulation model APPSIM were used for the static aging of the base data to every five years from 2015 to 2030. The 2015 output dataset of another microsimulation model STINMOD was linked with Care & WorkMOD base data using synthetic matching. The matching process has added data on further economic variables from STINMOD into Care & WorkMOD, which are not available in SDACs. Economic data were indexed based on long-term trends on economic variables to capture the projected economic growth from 2015 to 2030. Care & WorkMOD can provide the long-term estimates of the lost labour productivity due to informal caring responsibilities and the related economic burden both at the individual and national level, and has the potential to fill the gaps in the current body of evidence on the costs of chronic diseases, particularly related to informal carers.
Highlights
Informal carers provide care to others in need of support, and make a significant contribution to a nation’s productivity by replacing paid care of people with disability, mental illnesses, chronic conditions, and the frail aged (Nguyen & Connelly, 2014)
In this paper we describe the methods, data sources and assumptions used in constructing a new microsimulation model, Care&WorkMOD, which has been developed to estimate the long-term economic costs of lost labour force participation of informal carers due to their caring responsibilities
Static Incomes Model (STINMOD) is based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Surveys of Income and Housing data and covers Australians living in households excluding those living in cared accommodation, similar to the Care&WorkMOD base population
Summary
Informal carers provide care to others in need of support, and make a significant contribution to a nation’s productivity by replacing paid care of people with disability, mental illnesses, chronic conditions, and the frail aged (Nguyen & Connelly, 2014). The ability to project future numbers of informal carers and their labour force participation is important for national governments to provide long-term care and manage health care costs. An Australian study, based on the 1998 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC) and the 2001 Census data, produced small area estimates of disability levels and the need for aged care across age groups, in order to allow the execution of social policy and elderly care services for older Australians (Chin & Harding, 2006; Lymer et al, 2009). The model is able to capture the long-term projections of demographic changes; changes labour force participation rates (for all genders, and across age groups); real wage growth; real growth in other economic variables such as the value of assets and savings; number of informal carers
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