Linked lives: The Utility of an Agent-Based Approach to Modeling Partnership and Household Formation in the Context of Social Care

Noble, J., Silverman, E. , Bijak, J., Rossiter, S., Evandrou, M., Bullock, S., Vlachantoni, A. and Falkingham, J. (2012) Linked lives: The Utility of an Agent-Based Approach to Modeling Partnership and Household Formation in the Context of Social Care. Proceedings of the 2012 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), 9-12 Dec 2012. pp. 1-12. (doi: 10.1109/WSC.2012.6465264)

Abstract

The UK's population is aging, which presents a challenge as older people are the primary users of health and social care services. We present an agent-based model of the basic demographic processes that impinge on the supply of, and demand for, social care: namely mortality, fertility, health-status transitions, internal migration, and the formation and dissolution of partnerships and households. Agent-based modeling is used to capture the idea of “linked lives” and thus to represent hypotheses that are impossible to express in alternative formalisms. Simulation runs suggest that the per-taxpayer cost of state-funded social care could double over the next forty years. A key benefit of the approach is that we can treat the average cost of state-funded care as an outcome variable, and examine the projected effect of different sets of assumptions about the relevant social processes.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Silverman, Dr Eric
• Authors: Noble, J., Silverman, E., Bijak, J., Rossiter, S., Evandrou, M., Bullock, S., Vlachantoni, A., and Falkingham, J.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Health & Wellbeing > MRC/CSO SPHSU