Due to an increase in the ageing population, the migrant care market now includes new home-based long-term care (LTC) under the national long-term care insurance. This study underlines a perspective of the Korean migrant care market in terms of long-term care quality in South Korea. Thus, the study explored the institutional factors that restrict and promote the migrant care workers (MCWs). Two migrant workers groups were analysed: migrant care workers in home-based long-term care versus nursing hospitals. Designed as an in-depth policy-oriented content analysis, this study used three types of data including interviews with eight participants (MCWs, the nursing hospital manager, and the LTC home manager), organisational documents (employment eligibility criteria), and institutional texts (law, administration rules, etc.). Our results indicate that the factors hindering employment of MCWs in home-based LTC were visa status, qualification requirements (the National Qualified License), wage regulation policies, and social security obligations. A promoting factor was jobs that hired on an on-call basis. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the growth of the migration care market and sustainability in LTC quality depend on the policy directions of the Korean long-term care insurance.

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The purpose of this study was to derive a multidimensional health trajectory of Korean senior citizens from life course approach and to analyze whether socioeconomic disparities appear in each group. Data were taken from the 2nd to 7th Waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging Panel Survey (KLoSA). The study used methodology including group-based multi-trajectory and multinomial logistic regression. As a result, the study revealed five groups with different health trajectories: general aging group (41.6%), healthy aging group (18.2%), depression/cognitive disability group (18.5%), sudden decline in health group (15.6%) and severe health impairment group (6.1%). The gender, income, and assets influenced each group differently whereas education showed no meaningful significance. Specifically, low income and assets were closely related to the sudden decline group and severe health impairment group, whereas income and gender (male) were directly proportional to the status of the healthy aging group (G2). In contrast, the depression/cognitive disability group demonstrated gender (female) was a significant influencing factor but educational background, income, and assets were not related. The study suggests future intervention in health and care policies for each group of different health trajectories is necessary.