Human Services and Long-term Care

‘This book makes the important point that human services (including long-term care) are very different from other goods and services because the services provided are so heterogeneous and because service quality has such a profound impact on the consumer’s quality of life. The book conducts a comprehensive and interdisciplinary analysis of the market for human services with particular emphasis on the market for long-term care and proposes a novel solution to the market design problem in this sector.’ — Charles Yuji Horioka, Professor, Asian Growth Research Institute

‘Based on an integrated approach, this book provides an insightful investigation of the market for long-term care. It offers convincing recommendations toward a more quality-oriented provision of “human” services for the aged, and supports its arguments with a combination of simplistically presented empirical evidence and theoretical discussions that draw from different disciplines, including, most notably, Health Economics and Public Administration. Overall, a must read for academics and policymakers alike.’— Nopphol Witvorapong, Assistant Professor, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

‘Based on the “Care Market Model (CMM)”, Yoshihiko Kadoya has produced a path-breaking policy studies on long-term care for the elderly from an interdisciplinary perspective. By taking a model-testing approach and analyzing cases in OECD countries and especially the case in Japan, the integrated discussions of this book provide valuable recommendations for governments in dealing with aging and aged societies. These include the need for governments to implement a model to direct market competition to enhance the quality of services, provide users with service quality information about providers and need to develop a process-based performance measurement for human services. Yoshihiko Kadoya also suggests that the CMM ensures not only efficiency and quality, but also would not be costly for governments provided the gap between the rich and poor stays small when adopting the universal system for long-term care provision. This book is food for thought and Yoshihiko Kadoya welcomes further discussions and refinements from various disciplines.’ — Lee Lai To, Senior Professor and Director of Asian Research Center for International Development, Mae Fah Luang University, Thailand

Yoshihiko Kadoya is Director of the Hiroshima Institute of Health Economics Research (HiHER) and Professor of Economics, Hiroshima University, Japan.