Who burdens the welfare state? Migration and ageing in housing, education, and healthcare demand

TL;DR

This study projects Austria's future healthcare, education, and housing demand by citizenship status, revealing sector-specific impacts of migration, ageing, and fertility on welfare system pressures through 2050.

Contribution

It introduces a structural demographic model disaggregating service demand by citizenship and region, providing nuanced projections for policy insights.

Findings

Ageing of Austrian nationals drives healthcare demand 4.7 times more than immigration.

Migration accounts for all net housing demand growth, mainly in metropolitan areas.

Education demand contracts overall, driven more by foreign births than new arrivals.

Abstract

Political discourse attributes the pressure on European welfare systems to foreign nationals. Yet projections of service demand rarely disaggregate service demand by citizenship status. We develop a structural demographic model and project healthcare, education, and housing demand in Austria through 2050, disaggregated by citizenship status and regions across migration scenarios. We find that migration, ageing, and fertility shape each sector differently. In healthcare, the ageing of Austrian nationals contributes 4.7 times more to demand growth than immigration, with the most acute pressures in rural, low-migration regions. In housing, migration accounts for the entire net growth in demand, concentrated in metropolitan hubs. In education, aggregate demand contracts regardless of migration assumptions, whereas future needs are driven more by the births of foreigners in Austria than by new arrivals. Foreign nationals consume services in proportion to their demographic weight, with deviations explained by age structure rather than over-utilisation. These results show that the drivers of service demand are sector-specific: migration restrictions could ease housing pressure, but would not address ageing-driven healthcare demand and may accelerate contraction in the education system.