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Despite numerous measures, gender stereotypes about abilities in mathematics and reading persist in schools, affecting both boys' and girls' schooling and educational choices. Inequalities also persist outside the classroom, where women, despite greater educational attainment, experience lower employment rates and often receive lower salaries than men with similar levels of education. Nonetheless, the many measures taken by countries have brought some encouraging signs of progress. However, more work is needed to ensure that improvements in education are also reflected in improvements once boys and girls transition into the world of work.

Drawing on data from the Opportunities module of the 2022 wave of the OECD Risks that Matter survey, this Policy Insights looks at people’s concerns about inequality and examines their views on the role held by different actors – ranging from public and private sectors to civil society and citizens – in reducing economic divides. The analysis exposes a widespread concern about the multiple facets of inequality: on average, nearly seven-in-ten respondents think that economic resources should be distributed more equally and up to half of them believe that non-economic disparities are too high. Acknowledging the complex nature of inequality, respondents also recognise the need for a multi-stakeholder approach. National governments are seen as key but not exclusive players, and more than half of respondents believe that both public and private actors have a key role to play in addressing inequality.

This report outlines a new methodology and provides a first exploratory analysis of technologies and applications that are at the core of recent advances in AI. Using AI-related keywords and technology classes, the study identifies AI-related patents protected in the United States in 2000-18. Among those, “core” AI patents are selected based on their counts of AI-related forward citations. The analysis finds that, compared to other (AI and non-AI) patents, they are more original and general, and tend to be broader in technological scope. Technologies related to general AI, robotics, computer/image vision and recognition/detection are consistently listed among core AI patents, with autonomous driving and deep learning having recently become more prominent. Finally, core AI patents tend to spur innovation across AI-related domains, although some technologies – likely AI applications, such as autonomous driving or robotics – appear to increasingly contribute to developments in their own field.

As the displacement of Ukrainians in OECD countries is prolonged, additional integration support in host countries is needed for optimal outcomes, yet the nature and scope of support needed may not align with the usual integration practices as many refugees are expected to want to return to home when the situation permits. Considering the conflicting needs, adopting a dual intent approach could prepare for both indefinite stay as well as for possible return of refugees by deliberatively seeking to minimise possible return barriers.

Teachers’ salaries are widely debated around the world, with divergent views among the actors of education. Salaries have risen very little over the last decade and have even fallen in real terms in almost half of OECD countries between 2015 and 2022. However, salary levels are just one of the many factors contributing to the attractiveness of the profession. In addition to raising salaries, decision makers should also take steps to raise the status of the profession in society, and offer teachers more opportunities for professional development and mobility to ensure that the profession remains intellectually stimulating throughout their careers.

Good mental health is a vital part of people’s well-being and essential for individuals and societies to thrive. The recognition that successful mental health strategies need to involve a range of sectors beyond health is not new, yet in practice coalition-building often remains limited and not implemented at scale. This Policy Insights highlights the main findings from the report How to Make Societies Thrive? Coordinating Approaches to Promote Well-being and Mental Health that uses the OECD Well-being Framework to review how people’s economic, social, relational, civic and environmental experiences interlink with their mental health, and uses this evidence to identify policies that can jointly improve both mental health and wider well-being outcomes. Selected mental health initiatives across the OECD are also reviewed to illustrate which elements of the policy ecosystem can support collaboration across government and with society more broadly.

Produced as part of the OECD Global Action on Promoting Social and Solidarity Economy Ecosystems, funded by the European Union’s Foreign Partnership Instrument, this paper provides a framework to clarify the core notions of the social and solidarity economy, along with social economy, social enterprise, social innovation and other related notions. The objective is to explain what they are and understand how these notions have evolved in recent decades. It also aims to capture and document the great diversity within social and solidarity economy organisations in terms of purposes, legal entities, business models and practices to help better characterise the “population” of social and solidarity economy entities.

This paper estimates the data intensity of occupations/sectors (i.e. the share of job postings per occupation/sector related to the production of data) using natural language processing (NLP) on job advertisements in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Online job advertisement data collected by Lightcast provide timely and disaggregated insights into labour demand and skill requirements of different professions. The paper makes three major contributions. First, indicators created from the Lightcast data add to the understanding of digital skills in the labour market. Second, the results may advance the measurement of data assets in national account statistics. Third, the NLP methodology can handle up to 66 languages and can be adapted to measure concepts beyond digital skills. Results provide a ranking of data intensity across occupations, with data analytics activities contributing most to aggregate data intensity shares in all three countries. At the sectoral level, the emerging picture is more heterogeneous across countries. Differences in labour demand primarily explain those variations, with low data-intensive professions contributing most to aggregate data intensity in the United Kingdom. Estimates of investment in data, using a sum of costs approach and sectoral intensity shares, point to lower levels in the United Kingdom and Canada than in the United States.

This report assesses the current state of water transport employment in Europe and links it to water transport governance. Authorities generally consider the skillset required by employees in water transport strategically important. However, evolving governance frameworks might have undermined the possibility of maintaining these skills in Europe. This report assesses incoherence in government policies and provides recommendations for reform to ensure the relevant skills needed in water transport can be maintained.

From the onset of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, most refugee arrivals have been women and children, creating unique challenges for integration. The share of women among adult refugees is around 70% in most host countries and many have arrived with children, with the share of minors around 30%. Most OECD countries are supporting the socio-economic integration of Ukrainian refugee women through their pre-existing mainstream integration systems. Refugee integration policies have been, however, often created with different gender and educational profiles in mind, which may weaken outcomes in the longer term. There are some promising targeted measures available in OECD countries to support the socio-economic integration of Ukrainian refugee women. These include counselling, networking opportunities, training, and work placements, but also general community-building activities aimed at women.

Drawing on the OECD Well-being Framework, this paper outlines the state of well-being outcomes in Finland and identifies strengths, weaknesses and trends compared to other OECD countries. Overall, Finland is an established international leader in well-being and sustainability. Six key insights highlight the several challenges for well-being that remain in Finland and should be addressed in a comprehensive, balanced and inclusive way. These insights have been identified by considering economic, social, and environmental outcomes – and inequalities in these – simultaneously, to highlight the type of policy-relevant findings that arise when applying a well-being approach to measuring progress.

This paper lays out an approach, and a research agenda, for assessing the impact of carbon pricing on household budgets. It relies on a rich set of available data and policy models and combines them in a way that is informative for mapping the gains and losses at the household level in the short term as countries transition to a low-carbon economy. After accounting for direct burdens from higher fuel prices, indirect effects from higher prices of goods other than fuel, and households’ behavioural responses, overall burdens are only mildly regressive. Recycling carbon-tax revenues back to households allows considerable scope for avoiding or cushioning losses for large parts of the population, and existing policy models can be used to design compensation measures that facilitate majority support for carbon tax packages.

Even though much uncertainty remains regarding the length of stay of Ukrainian refugees in host countries, continued fighting has dimmed prospects of an early return and the issue of labour market integration is becoming increasingly pertinent. Finding gainful employment commensurate with refugees’ educational and professional qualifications supports new arrivals in becoming self-sufficient and boosts the local economy. It also enables them to use and possibly further enhance their skills, which is crucial for the future recovery of Ukraine. This policy response outlines the existing evidence on the socio-economic profiles and labour market integration of Ukrainian refugees in OECD countries as well as relevant policies to further support labour market integration. Findings suggest that the labour market inclusion of Ukrainian refugees has been faster compared to other refugee groups. That said, much of the early employment uptake by Ukrainian refugees has been concentrated in low-skilled jobs, thus skills mismatches are widespread.