Documents Widmaier, Sarah 2 results

"Increasing international migration and changing immigrant populations in OECD countries make international comparable data on migrant populations essential. These data should be updated regularly to capture a detailed picture of migrant populations. This document presents the first results of the update of the Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries (DIOC) for the years 2005/06. It describes immigrant and emigrant populations by socio-demographic characteristics and labour market outcomes in the OECD, as well as updated "brain drain" figures.

In 2005/06, 10.8% of the population in the OECD was foreign-born, representing 91 million persons. Latin American and African migrant populations increased by more than 30% between 2000 and 2005/06, slightly more than that of Asian migrants (27%). Labour market outcomes of immigrants vary by region and country of origin, but they improved significantly since 2000. In many OECD countries, low-educated foreign-born fare better on the labour market than their native-born counterparts, but high-educated migrants tend to have lower employment rates and higher unemployment rates than their native-born counterparts."

"Regarding social needs in Germany long-term care is an important issue due to an ageing population. Shrinking social networks are leading to a greater need for a public long-term care system. In 1995 the social long-term care insurance was introduced in Germany. In recent years some drawbacks of the social long-term care insurance structure turned out to be in need of reform: While health insurance is a fully comprehensive system, long-term care insurance only provides limited cover. Therefore, insurance funds have an incentive to shift some services from health care to long-term care insurance. Additionally, there is no free competition on the long-term care market because care packages included in the in-kind transfers are negotiated (with respect to services and prices) between insurance funds and professional care providers. Finally, the financial situation of the German social long-term care insurance is tight. While in the first years after introduction the net results of revenues and expenditures were positive they have been negative since 1999 which is due to an increasing number of benefit recipients. Therefore, we discuss several reform options which have been proposed in order to overcome the financial and structural problems. Suggestions for the income side include the introduction of fixed premiums, a fully funded system, a private insurance, or a citizens' insurance. The introduction of individual budgets is the most popular option for the outcome side. A social experiment is under way in order to evaluate the impact of so-called matching transfers."