Financing the care gap: How MDBs can help transform care for older persons

Meeting the care needs of older persons in Europe faces mounting challenges as rapid population ageing drives rising demand. This pressure combines with persistent unmet needs, care staff shortages and fiscal constraints creating a widening gap between care needs and adequate service provision. Alongside the efforts of policy makers to realign public budgets to maximise efficiency and reshape respective policies, multilateral development banks (MDBs) can help address these challenges through three main channels: offering long-term, affordable financing; supporting loan aggregation to bring smaller projects together, and framework lending to expand access to capital; and providing technical assistance and policy support that strengthen the design and implementation of care systems. By combining these roles, MDBs can make a meaningful contribution to ensuring that care provision for older persons remains accessible, sustainable and of adequate quality as demographic pressures intensify.