108 Chapter 4 between their specialization and the needs of their clients) and set limits to the duration of services provision. DATA Data sources We use pseudonymised administrative data from CIZ on all applications to long-term care in the Netherlands between 2009 and 2013. The CIZ data include information about the application (date, person filing the application, type of application, type of assessment procedure and type of care and intensity requested), eligibility decision (type of care, intensity, and duration attributed) and a pseudonymised assessor identifier. Application data is linked to nationwide administrative records at the individual level. Linked datasets include (a) municipal registries (2009-2017) for demographics, household composition and linkage to parents; (b) data on long-term care use (2010-2014) for information on admissions to supported housing or other long-term care institutions and use of home care; (c) specialist mental health treatment records (2010-2014) for information on mental disorders diagnosis available for applicants treated by mental health care specialists; (d) health insurance claims (2010-2014) for data on annual health care expenditures of the applicants and the parents (including curative outpatient and inpatient mental health care expenditure; (e) tax records (2010-2017) for income from work and total personal income (gross labour earnings plus transfers) of the applicants and the parents; and, (f) death records (2011-2017) for all-cause mortality of the applicants. Study population Starting from all long-term care applications in the Netherlands between 2009 and 2013 we construct a homogeneous and relevant population to measure the leniency of the assessors. First, we select applications who requested supported housing. Second, we exclude applications of individuals older than 79 and people who identified as having a psychogeriatric illness or a disability, or who requested palliative care. Third, we exclude applications in which the assessors´ discretionary power would be absent or limited: applications approved by back-office employees, emergency applications handled in shorter time-frames, applications that follow specific predefined routes, and applications of individuals that obtained a valid supported housing eligibility decision during the previous 365 days5. Finally, to obtain precise estimates of assessor leniency, we restrict our data to applications that were handled by assessors with at least 30 applications of the same regional office and assessment procedure within the study period. Table A1 in the appendix shows that most exclusion criteria impacted fewer than 6% of the applications. The exceptions are applications of individuals eligible to supported housing 5 The latter group of applications correspond either to requests to extend eligibility or to changes between different intensities of care for those potentially using it, or to re-assessments post-termination within a short time frame. In all these cases the assessor´s leniency will be considerably influenced by the previous assessment.
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