Is the Current Long-term Care System Untenable for the Baby Boomer Generation?

Living to 100 Club

On this Living to 100 Club podcast, we invite Frances Woolley as our guest. Dr. Woolley is an economist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is an authority on challenges ahead as the Baby Boomer generation contemplates the risk of needing long-term care. We discuss the demands on health care systems as our population ages. Also discussed are the shortage of long-term care beds, and the inequities in paying for this care. Families now make huge sacrifices in caring for spouse or a parent, with little or no outside help. Eventually this care shifts to a state (in the U.S.) or a provincial system (in Canada) that may be fragmented and inequitable.

Can the long-term care system infrastructure keep up with the improvements needed, considering constantly changing decision-makers and uneven political influence? How should the risk of needing long-term care be shared among individuals, families, and governments? Is it possible to raise public funds to face the looming long-term care system crisis as the need for dementia beds mushrooms? Join us as we wrestle with major social policy issues facing the 80+ age group.

Mini Bio

Frances Woolley is a Professor of Economics at Carleton University, where she has taught since 1990. Her research centers on families and public policy. Dr. Woolley's most-cited work is on modelling family-decision making. She also studies inequality within the household, feminist economics, and tax-benefit policy towards families. Recently she has spent more time researching the provision and finance of long-term care. This is inspired in part by the challenges her family faced when her father needed care at the start of the COVID pandemic.

Frances’s true passion is using economics to explain everyday experience, and in sharing her love of economics with her students. She has served as Secretary Treasurer and also President of the Canadian Economics Association. She is the co-editor of the Canadian Tax Journal and the Review of Economics of the Household. Dr. Woolley has served as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs at Carleton University. Frances holds a BA from Simon Fraser University, an MA from Queen’s, and a PhD from the London School of Economics.

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