The paper examines the recent reforms of health insurance in Chile and Argentina. These partially replace social health insurance with individual insurance administered through the private sector. In Chile, reforms in the early 1980s allowed private health insurance funds to compete for...

Almost all developing countries are now experiencing demographic ageing. This paper examines the consequences of ageing for the poor. It assesses the extent to which the poor are participating in demographic ageing, or whether the process is largely restricted to relatively privileged groups....

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The paper accounts for the failure of public social spending in Latin American to reach poor and vulnerable groups of the population. It considers the level and allocation of expenditure; the distribution of entitlements across the population and the capacity of different groups to mobilize these...

This paper assesses the usefulness of Nussbaum's version of the capabilities approach for understanding the condition of older people in developing countries. It observes that ageing is a highly heterogeneous experience, but that policy debates take a polarized approach. The paper then...

In November 2002 the World Bank published a report on the Argentine health sector. The report accurately portrays the complexity and severity of the problems facing the health care system. It stresses that these problems are not purely a product of the country's economic collapse, noting that...

The burden of stroke and other non-communicable diseases has risen sharply in developing countries in recent years. This article provides a detailed review of this trend and its underlying causes, and discusses the social and economic effects of stroke and the scope for interventions to reduce...

The International Handbook on Ageing and Public Policy explores the challenges arising from the ageing of populations across the globe for government, policy makers, the private sector and civil society. It examines various national state approaches to welfare provisions for older people, and...