The size and growth of a country’s population provides important contextual information to help understand other social and economic outcomes.

Together with mortality and migration, fertility is a core driver of population growth, which reflects both the causes and effects of economic and social developments.

Population is unevenly distributed among regions within countries. Differences in climatic and environmental conditions discourage human settlement in some areas and favour concentration of the population around a few urban centres. This pattern is reinforced by higher economic opportunities and wider availability of services stemming from urbanisation itself.

In all OECD countries, populations aged 65 years and over have dramatically increased over the last decades, both in size and as a percentage of total population. Elderly people, it turns out, tend to be concentrated in few areas within each country, which means that a small number of regions will have to face a number of specific social and economic challenges raised by ageing population.

As a result of successive waves of migration flows from varying destinations, countries differ in the share and composition of immigrants and foreign population. The definition of these populations is key for international comparisons.

Permanent immigrant inflows are presented by category of entry which is a key determinant of immigrant results on the labour market. They cover regulated movements of foreigners as well as free movement migration.

Changes in the size of the working-age population affect more strongly the foreign-born than the native-born for whom such changes are hardly noticeable from one year to another. This is notably due to the impact of net migration. In most OECD countries, employment rates for immigrants are lower than those for native-born persons. However, the situation is more diverse if one disaggregates employment rates by educational attainment.

Immigrant workers are more affected by unemployment than native-born workers in traditional European immigration countries. Conversely, in some settlement countries (Australia, New Zealand and the United States) as well as in Hungary, the unemployment rate depends less on the place of birth. Some groups, such as young immigrants, women or older immigrants have greater difficulties in finding jobs.