Integrating the retirement income system and aged care funding in Australia

An Aged Care Levy as a social insurance option

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11228792
AutoresA Howe (0000-0002-1450-4993, Department of Sociology Macquarie University Sydney NSW Australia, autor correspondente), Ben Spies-Butcher (0000-0002-0427-5082, Department of Sociology Macquarie University Sydney NSW Australia)
Ano2022
Volume57
Fascículo2
Páginas388-407
Data de publicação2022-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAustralian Journal of Social Issues (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0157-6321 • E-ISSN: 1839-4655
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/ajs4.179
OpenAlexW3193935928
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas22

Retirement incomes and aged care have both received considerable policy attention in Australia over the last three decades, but as in other countries, the two financing systems have remained largely separate in policy and practice. The problem is located at the intersection of wider policy debates about shifts from public to private welfare and concerns over intergenerational equity. This paper aims to integrate these related debates by incorporating aged care into the “pillars” framework used to understand retirement incomes. We propose an Aged Care Superannuation Levy applied to superannuation fund earnings, winding back the large and growing public tax concessions that support this pillar of private defined contribution pensions in Australia’s retirement income system. This revenue would create a social insurance pillar for aged care to stand alongside the four other pillars of retirement incomes that interact variously with aged care financing. Interest in a social insurance pillar of aged care financing is renewed in the light of the Royal Commission into quality and safety of aged care that reported in February 2021. As the Royal Commission recommendations on financing were divided and not taken up in government policy, the way remains opens for further consideration of the alternative approach proposed here

Actuarial science · Aged care · Business · Demographic economics · Economics · Labour economics · Political science · Project commissioning · Publishing · Social care · Social insurance · demographic modeling and climate adaptation · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Medicine · Nursing · Gerontology