Book Chapter

The Effects of Demographic Change on Health and Medical Expenditures

Nakanishi, Satoshi, Nakayama, Noriyoshi

2001

Overview

This chapter analyzes the impact of the aging Japanese population on the health sector and on the economy as a whole. It focuses on (a) the effect of population aging on future medical care costs; (b) the effect of cost containment strategies on medical care expenditures; and (c) the extent to which licensing systems can or should be used to control the flow of new entrants into the medical profession. A simulation shows that maintaining the present system of payment for health care as the population ages will result in medical care expenditures growing at an average annual rate of 4.3 percent between 1991 and 2040. The share of medical expenditure in GDP will reach 10.8 percent in 2015, before gradually starting to decline. Moreover, even though people invest in their futures rather than their present medical care, their health status in the twenty-first century will be lower because of population aging. Controlling medical expenditures through cost containment will require the Japanese people to accept both major increases in the rate of self-payment for medical care and a decline in national health status.

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Subject: aging population / Economic History / health care costs / health status / Japanese / Labour and Demographic Economics / licensing systems / medical care costs / self-payment / Welfare Economics
• ISBN: 9780226620817, 0226620816