Dr  Joan Costa-Font is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Policy and the European Institute, LSE. His area of expertise is the economic analysis of institutions, health, health care and ageing, with a particular focus on Europe and he is the author of The Economics of New Health Technologies (2009).

• Editorial Introduction (Joan Costa-Font). 1. Long-term Care: A Suitable Case for Social Insurance (Nicholas Barr).2. The Long Road to Universalism? Recent Developments in the Financing of Long-term Care in England (Adelina Comas-Herrera, Raphael Wittenberg and Linda Pickard).3. Reforming Long-term Care Policy in France: Private–Public Complementarities (Blanche Le Bihan and Claude Martin).4. Sustainability of Comprehensive Universal Long-term Care Insurance in the Netherlands (Frederik T. Schut and Bernard van den Berg).5. Social Insurance for Long-Term Care: An Evaluation of the German Model (Heinz Rothgang).6. Long-term Care in Central and South-Eastern Europe: Challenges and Perspectives in Addressing a ‘New’ Social Risk (August Österle).7. Devolution, Diversity and Welfare Reform: Long-term Care in the ‘Latin Rim’ (Joan Costa-Font).8. One Uniform Welfare State or a Multitude of Welfare Municipalities? The Evolution of Local Variation in Swedish Elder Care (Gun-Britt Trydegård and Mats Thorslund).9. Reforming Long-term Care in Portugal: Dealing with the Multidimensional Character of Quality (Silvina Santana).Index.