Access and Cost of Education and Health Services
Preparing Regions for Demographic Change
Public service provision and delivery is one of the main mandates of regional and national governments in OECD and European countries. Education and health services, with their place-based characteristics and frequent use respond to widespread need of citizens and constitute the most important part of public service provision. Providing public services that are equitable, affordable, accessible and of high quality is challenging for governments in many ways. The capacity of government to deliver on their service provision mandate has been put under further pressure by budgetary constraints and cuts following the 2008 financial crisis; demographic trends such as depopulation and ageing that affect the demand for services; and notably the current COVID-19 pandemic. More than ever, governments at all levels need to manage costs in order to allocate scarce and limited public resources into provision of services while ensuring adequate access to services of comparable quality to citizens everywhere.
This report aims to provide a better understanding on policies to address present and future public service provision by assessing the drivers of geographical differences in costs and access to education and health services. In particular, for primary and secondary schools and cardiology and maternity & obstetrics services this report:
- Offers new internationally comparable fine-grained estimates of service costs
- Compares user travel distances based on simulated school and hospital placements
- Estimates changes in costs driven by future population changes
- Sheds light on the present and future effect of demographic change on access to services in rural areas.
This report is combining the wealth of policy experience and knowledge within the OECD with frontier data and tools produced by the EC-JRC’s LUISA Territorial Modelling Platform. It is an excellent guide and tool for policy makers and practitioners to navigate the changes brought by demographic change and provide their constituencies with policies ready for current and emerging challenges and opportunities.
JACOBS Christiaan;
KOMPIL Mert;
MORENO-MONROY Ana;
2021-06-30
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC125015
978-92-76-39342-9 (online),
978-92-76-39343-6 (print),
2707-3424 (online),
2707-3416 (print),
OP KJ-03-21-309-EN-N (online),
OP KJ-03-21-309-EN-C (print),
Additional supporting files
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