No country has found a sustainable way to finance dementia care

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to quantify the most important of the costs of dementia: the losses to people living with the condition. In a forthcoming book, “The Great Demographic Reversal”, Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan, two economists, suggest that surveys could be used to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of plans to spend more on dementia. A sample of adults could be asked how much annual income they would be prepared to pay to reduce the risk of developing dementia, as it mounts with age.