An International Review of Long-Term Care Workforce: Policies and Shortages

The developed world's population is aging, due to trends of increased life expectancies and decreased fertility rates. These trends are predicted to increase demand on long-term care services. At the same time, the long-term care workforce is in shortage in most of the developed world. Moreover, such shortages are expected to increase due to parallel socio-demographic factors. The increase in demand for long-term care, coupled with shortage in supply of care workers, has promoted some attention from policymakers. The current paper provides an international review of institutional arrangements for long-term care in different developed countries and in particular explores different strategies used or proposed to resolve the shortage in the long-term care workforce.