Willingness-to-pay for Home and Community-based Aged Care Services in China : Findings From Anhui Province

Home- and community-based aged care services (HCBS) are favored universally by the elderly across countries and is considered more cost-effective than institutional care and helpful for containing aged care expenditures. Following the thirteenth five-year Plan (FYP) for the development of Aged Care Services and Building of Aged Care System, the Chinese government endeavors to better the three-tier aged care service system with home-based care as its bedrock, supported by community-based care, and supplemented by institutional care. The implication of such a service system is that a significant share of the aged care services is going to be provided at home or communities, and this makes financing HCBS a relevant policy issue for the vast majority of the elderly in the country. This paper examines the prevalence of HCBS needs among the elderly, the preferences over various HCBSs, the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for them (including the highest price for which a consumer will purchase one unit of a product out of his or her own pocket), and the variation in these indicators across socio-economic characteristics of individuals based on a household survey that was designed specifically to assess the demand and supply of aged care services in Anhui Province, China