The Knowledge to Decide

As an elderly person, living alone in Korea is difficult. What options do senior citizens have for nursing home facilities? Dr. Justin Lee, Managing Director of Spire Research and Consulting, South Korea shared his thoughts on Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo news portal. Korea now has 3,316 nursing homes and 1,500 specialized elderly hospitals nation-wide. The need for specialised elderly care in Korea is on a gradual rise, as those with health complications cannot live independently. At present, senior citizens with grade ratings of 1 or 2 for long term care under the Long-Term Care Insurance scheme are entitled to use these public nursing home facilities. Dr. Lee opined that paying more does not necessarily mean a better nursing home. Costs in public nursing homes are not consistently higher than those in private ones. Within the public nursing homes, the cost variation is minimal regardless of their management quality as public nursing homes need to abide by set government gui

With a USD450 million loan from World Bank, the Indonesian government’s efforts to provide more affordable housing for low-income families has received a big boost. Spire Research and Consulting supported the feasibility study for this World Bank program, working with Indonesia’s Ministry of Public Works and Housing (MENPUPERA). Spire helped execute a product concept test for the program to build affordable housing, working with Deloitte Indonesia. This was done via Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) across 4 cities. The findings revealed that Indonesia faces substantial demand for one million new housing units annually. Moreover, 29 million people (out of 250 million) of Indonesia’s urban population still live in slums. A portion of the World Bank’s loan will go to support the government’s housing assistance program (BSPS) and community-based housing development program (P2BPK) to target low-income homeowners. At the same time, Indonesia also offers the FLPP scheme – a