Overview

All countries in the Western Pacific Region will experience profound changes in their age demographics due to rising life expectancy and falling birth rates. While longer lives are a major achievement, they also raise several policy concerns related to health financing:

• Needs for health care may rise as populations age, which can accelerate growth in health care expenditures.
• Economic growth may slow due to fewer working-age people and possibly lower productivity of older workers, which can adversely affect revenues.

The Population Ageing financial Sustainability gap for Health systems (PASH) Simulator tool has been developed by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the World Health Organization (WHO) Kobe Centre to understand the implications of population ageing for health financing and to help countries in developing effective policy responses in light of the policy concerns outlined above.

In this regional report, the Observatory together with the WHO Kobe Centre and the Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) make use of the PASH Simulator to explore the likely effects of population ageing for health financing in 14 WPRO countries and consider a range of policy options to improve financial sustainability of health systems.