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The transition of the baby boomer bulge into old age and their increasing longevity will lift the numbers of elderly in residential aged care. Population ageing and associated fiscal pressures have motivated governments to shift responsibility for the financing of aged care to the individual. We consider policies that include owner-occupiers' housing wealth and imputed rental incomes in means tests that determine co-contribution charges for residential aged care. Differences in how housing wealth is included in the residential aged care resource tests of three OECD countries – Australia, England and the Netherlands – are documented. We find some neglected equity implications as tenants in all three countries typically pay higher co-payments for their residential aged care than homeowners with similar wealth holdings. These outcomes are a consequence of the concessional treatment of owners' housing equity stakes, and of wider significance given the growing importance of asset-based welfare strategies. England has relatively progressive asset and income tests that offer more limited concessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, government intervention in welfare states has witnessed a shift from 'government' to 'governance': policy making shifted from hierarchical government steering to mixed forms involving government, market and civic actors. Such terminology has also entered Chinese policy language on public rental housing (PRH) provision. To unravel the perceived power distribution in the relationships between the involved actors, this article draws from in-depth interviews in two Chinese cities: Chongqing and Fuzhou. The article thereby contributes new insights to the perceived power relations in Chinese PRH provision on the ground. It also develops an analytical framework based on Billis by complementing it with Social Network Analysis to measure the power relations. Such a framework will allow the comparison of different governance systems across time and different jurisdictions within and beyond China. This study shows the structures and mechanisms for non-governmental actors to play a role, which they do not have in the 'government' period, in the governance of PRH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]