Skip to main content

Valuing Aging in Place: A Discrete Choice Experiment on Housing and Care Preferences Among Older Singaporeans

Principal Investigator: Joan Costa-i-Font
Start Date: October 2026
End Date: eptember 2027
Funder: LSE–SMU Research Seed Fund
Partners: Singapore Management University
Region(s): Asia
Countries: Singapore
Keywords: Ageing in place; discrete choice experiment; long-term care; willingness to pay; subjective expectations

Singapore became a super-aged society in 2026, with more than one in five citizens aged 65 or over. It made the transition faster than Japan, Germany or the United States. Most older Singaporeans want to stay in their current homes as they age. Yet many will need care that is hard to provide at home: people aged 65 can expect to spend around four of their remaining years in poor health. Policymakers do not know whether the preference to age in place reflects informed choices about future care needs, or misperceptions about how long people will live and how likely they are to need care.

This distinction matters for policy. If housing preferences are partly driven by inaccurate beliefs, subsidies set to match stated demand may be too generous, and information campaigns could shift demand more cost-effectively than financial incentives.

This project, a collaboration between LSE and Singapore Management University (SMU), will embed a discrete choice experiment in the Singapore Life Panel, a large survey of adults aged 50 and over. More than 10,000 respondents will choose between housing options with varying features:

  • housing type: their current public (HDB) flat, a smaller “2-room Flexi” flat, a Community Care Apartment that bundles housing with on-site care, or a nursing home
  • monthly cost
  • level of care services
  • proximity to family
  • future health scenarios

Before making their choices, half of the respondents will be randomly given factual information on life expectancy, the probability of needing long-term care, and the costs of care. This allows the team to estimate a new measure, the “information wedge”: the difference in willingness to pay for aging in place between people who receive accurate information and those who do not. Respondents’ own beliefs about longevity and care needs will be measured beforehand, so the team can test whether people with larger misperceptions change their preferences more.

The project tests three hypotheses:

  1. Older Singaporeans are willing to pay a premium to age in place.
  2. Accurate information reduces that premium relative to care-integrated options.
  3. The size of the information wedge varies with people’s initial beliefs, income and cognitive ability.

Over 12 months, the team will design and pilot the survey, run it with the full panel, and analyse the results. It builds on Professor Costa-i-Font’s earlier European research, which found that willingness to pay to avoid moving into institutional care can reach 16% of income. The Singapore results will allow a direct cross-country comparison.

The findings will inform specific policy decisions in Singapore, including how to price Community Care Apartments, how to set the Silver Housing Bonus, and whether information campaigns could support better housing and care planning. Planned outputs include a paper in a leading health or public economics journal and presentations at international health economics conferences. The project also lays the foundation for follow-on funding applications.