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Almost all mathematics teachers across participating countries use clear and structured teaching practices, according to both teachers and students. A vast majority of teachers also use student-oriented practices and enhanced learning activities in their classroom. Cross-country differences are weak regarding the use of structuring practices, but moderate regarding the use of student-oriented practices and enhanced learning activities. Overall, mathematics teachers tend to report, more often than students, that they use a given teaching practice. The gap between teacher and student reports about the use of a given teaching practice varies across countries. Overall, the highest degree of convergence is observed for structuring practices, and the smallest is observed for student-oriented practices.
Adult migrants in all OECD countries are a diverse group, with different profiles and levels of education. Even if they hold tertiary degrees, they are more likely to have poorer labour market outcomes, including lower earnings. Participation in the labour market is more difficult for foreign-born
adults who arrived at a later age and acquired their qualifications in another country. It is important that host countries design and implement policies that will help immigrants improve their chances in their labour market, benefitting both the person and the country.
The ability of societies to preserve social cohesion in the presence of large migration flows depends on their capacity to integrate immigrants. Education can help immigrants acquire skills and contribute to the host-country economy; it can also foster immigrants’ social and emotional well-being and sustain their motivation to participate in the social and civic life of their new communities – and, by doing so, help them integrate more easily. But ensuring that students with an immigrant background have good well-being outcomes represents a significant challenge, because many immigrant or mixed-heritage students must overcome the adversities associated with displacement, socio-economic disadvantage, language barriers and the difficulty of forging a new identity all at the same time.
Treasury systems in sub-Saharan Francophone African countries share many features with the French public expenditure management system of the 1960s on which they were modelled. However, in a different economic and institutional environment, key elements of this framework have evolved in unexpected, unwelcome directions. This paper critically examines two main features of the French system in the sub-Saharan Francophone African context: the strict separation between the person ordering payment and the one disbursing funds, and the centralisation of funds in the treasury. This examination calls attention to – and suggests remedies for – the specific flaws that have evolved from the traditional framework.
Different regions often display large differences in educational attainment and employment outcomes, highlighting the importance of monitoring regional as well as national indicators and the need for government to develop tailored policy responses to ensure the benefits of education reach the whole country.
Every three years, the education community around the world eagerly awaits the release of the latest results from PISA. In addition to student proficiency in reading, mathematics and science, this December will see the publication of results on equity in education systems, school climate and students’ well-being. PISA rotates the main subject of assessment every three years, and the PISA 2018 assessment, like the PISA 2000 and 2009 assessments, focused on reading. The PISA definition of reading literacy has remained much the same over this period; in 2018, it can be summarised as understanding, using, evaluating, reflecting on and engaging with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society. But how people read has changed since 2009. Reading now involves not only the printed page but also electronic formats. This has led to a proliferation in the amount of text encountered every day, making it all the more important that students be able to discern between fact and opinion, and navigate through different sources of text in order to construct meaning.
Solving unfamiliar problems on one’s own is important, but in today’s increasingly interconnected world, people are often required to collaborate in order to achieve their goals. Teamwork has numerous benefits, from a diverse range of opinions to synergies among team members, and assigning tasks to those who are best suited to them.
Collaboration can also be fraught with difficulties. Instead of dividing tasks effectively, one team member might reproduce another’s work. Interpersonal tension and poor communication might also prevent the team from achieving its full potential. Working with others is a skill that might not be natural to everyone, but it can be developed with time and practice.
Every three years, PISA measures students’ ability to apply their knowledge in three core subjects – science, reading and mathematics – to familiar settings. These competencies, however, are not sufficient to thrive in life. Hence, PISA 2015 – for the first time ever in any international assessment – measures students’ ability to solve problems collaboratively in 52 education systems around the world.
While the benefits of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services to better learning are now widely acknowledged, a widespread and accessible provision for these services also helps support gender equality in the workforce. In particular, the availability, intensity, reliability and affordability of ECEC play an important role in engaging women full time in the labour market. While ECEC has experienced a surge of policy attention over the last decades, wide variations still exist across countries and its costs remains a barrier to accessing paid work for poor families and lone parents, mostly mothers. More efforts are needed to increase the provision and accessibility of free ECEC services, especially for children under the age of 3.
Business investment in OECD countries has remained weak, in particular since the 2008 global financial crisis. At the same time, the cost of capital has significantly and steadily decreased over the last thirty years, reflecting a fall in both interest rates and corporate tax rates. This raises the question of whether business investment still responds to the cost of capital and thus whether corporate tax policy can support investment. This paper analyses trends in business investment and in the cost of capital in OECD countries over the past three decades. Then, it investigates empirically the sensitivity of business investment to corporate taxation, and how this sensitivity varies across firm, investment and tax-design characteristics. Panel regressions at the firm and industry levels confirm that business investment rates are negatively related to corporate taxation, measured by country-level forward-looking effective tax rates. However, the tax sensitivity of business investment has fallen significantly since the global financial crisis. It also differs significantly across firms, assets, and corporate tax design characteristics. Overall, the estimation results suggest that a nuanced and granular approach to corporate tax policy, accounting for heterogeneity in tax sensitivity, is needed to support investment effectively. The paper discusses possible policy options, including the reduction of non-profit taxes, the use of targeted corporate income tax instruments, and the use of more generous capital allowances where they may induce strong investment responses.
A tertiary degree yields better earnings, especially in countries with a small share of tertiary-educated adults in the population. However, this earnings advantage varies significantly by field of study. In some countries, workers with a tertiary degree in arts and humanities earn less than those with just an upper secondary education. Occupations that have formed the backbone of society during the COVID-19 crisis, such as education and nursing, have among the lowest relative earnings of all fields of study. There is no clear correlation between the share of tertiary graduates by field of study and the relative earnings advantage. This may be due to the selectiveness of some fields, students’ personal interests or misinformation about the labour market. Policy makers will need to consider ways beyond market mechanisms to increase the attractiveness of fields of study which offer essential skills for society.
This paper reviews empirical research on finance and labour markets. Preliminary themes in the literature follow. Finance may interact with labour market institutions to jointly determine labour outcomes. Highly leveraged firms show greater employment volatility during cyclical fluctuations, and leverage strengthens firm bargaining power in labour negotiations. Bank deregulation may have mixed impacts on labour depending upon the state of bank regulations and labour markets. Leveraged buyouts tend to dampen acquired firm job growth as they pursue labour productivity gains. The shareholder value movement may contribute to short-termism among corporate managers, which can divert funds away from firm capital accumulation toward financial markets, crowd out productive investment and fuel unemployment. Declining wage shares in OECD countries may be driven in part by financial globalisation. The financial sector contributes to rising concentration near the top of the income distribution. Finance is linked to increased reallocation of labour, which may either enhance or impede productivity growth. Finally, there is limited evidence that rising interest rate environments and homeowners with mortgage balances that exceed their home’s value may reduce labour mobility rates.
Across OECD countries, individuals without tertiary-educated parents tend to be considerably under-represented among entrants to tertiary education. However, inequalities tend to accumulate throughout an individual’s educational career. In particular, the period from starting upper secondary to entering tertiary education is critical in determining students’ future career and education choices. Understanding how socio-economic disparities at earlier levels may influence entry rates to tertiary education will be essential if policy makers are to design better policies to improve equity.
The demand and supply of tertiary workers contribute to shaping their earnings advantage. The expansion of tertiary education has been accompanied by a decrease in the earnings advantage of tertiary-educated younger and older workers in many OECD and partner countries. Tertiary-educated workers reap the largest advantage in countries where few adults have completed tertiary education. Older tertiary-educated workers benefit from both their relative scarcity among their generation and their longer professional experience, resulting in a higher earning advantage than their younger counterparts. It is difficult to say whether younger tertiary educated workers will achieve the same earnings advantage over time that the older generation currently enjoys. However, a formal qualification is not the sole assurance of higher earnings: higher skills lead to positive financial outcomes across all educational attainment levels.
Today’s multicultural learning environments are both a challenge and an opportunity for countries. Education systems not only play a critical role in the integration of students from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, but should also aim to have all students value diversity and contribute to the building of a diverse yet inclusive society as global citizens. TALIS 2018 survey questions on diversity are centred on the context of students’ experiences at both the school and classroom level. Therefore, this data is an opportunity to compare teachers’ and schools’ capacities to respond to these objectives, as well as to supplement the body of existing research on student outcomes and achievement. The insights from this data are one-of-a-kind, as they address a critical information gap in educational policy making.
This paper proposes an approach to assess the extent of automatic fiscal stabilisation of aggregate household disposable income after a specific shock. The approach is based on the national account identity of household disposable income and elements of the OECD methodology to cyclically adjust budget balances. In a stylised scenario assuming a decline in household market income, automatic stabilisers in 23 OECD countries are found to offset on average around 60% of the shock on impact. Direct taxes provide larger stabilisation than social benefits and social security contributions. There are important differences in the effectiveness of automatic stabilisers across the OECD countries. They mainly reflect non-linear interactions among the size of a specific automatic stabiliser, the elasticity of the automatic stabiliser with respect to a relevant economic variable and the specific shock scenario analysed.
Brazil spends around 15% of GDP on different social benefits, but within these expenditures, different benefits have different social impacts. While the small conditional cash transfer programme Bolsa Família is well-targeted to the poor and has a strong diminishing effect on inequality, pension benefits largely reach those with above-median incomes. Over many years, and as a result of different indexation mechanisms, the real value of pension benefits has increased rapidly, while conditional cash transfers have struggled to keep pace with inflation. This paper presents a simulation experiment using household data to demonstrate the significant potential that changes in the annual benefit indexation mechanism of social security benefits could have had for reducing inequality. Maintaining the purchasing power of pension benefits while shifting the increased pension spending that resulted from automatic indexation towards conditional cash transfers would have allowed significantly stronger progress in reducing inequality. This strengthens the case for rethinking the current indexation mechanism of social security benefits in Brazil.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call to achieve peace and prosperity for all by 2030, leaving no one behind. This paper summarises available evidence to measure the distance that OECD countries need to travel in order to reach SDG targets related to women and girls. It finds that 102 of the 247 indicators in the UN Global Indicator Framework are gender-related. However, in practice, data for OECD countries are available for only 35 indicators, distributed across 9 of the 17 goals. Based on available data, OECD countries are on average closest to meeting targets for women on Health (Goal 3), mortality from homicides and occupational injuries (Goals 16 and 8). Conversely, they are further away from targets in three areas: personal safety (Goal 16), equal representation (Goals 9 and 5) and healthy life-styles (Goals 2 and 3). Where data is available for both men and women, the evidence shows that women are closer to SDG targets than men on all indicators related to Health (Goal 3), but are further away from targets in many employment-related targets (Goals 8 and 9) as well as on feeling safe (Goal 16) and ICT skills (Goal 4). No data are available for the planet goals (Goals 6, 12, 13, 14 and 15), for which few indicators are identified as gender-related.
This paper uses several recent advances in time-varying spectral methods to analyse the growth cycles of the core of the euro area in terms of frequency content and phasing of cycles. There are two main findings. First that coherence and phasing between the three core members of the euro area (France, Germany and Italy) continue to differ, and that for France they increased in the 1990s but not noticeably since the launch of the euro. Second that similarities vary considerably according to the length of cycle. They are high for low frequencies but lower at traditional business cycle frequencies. Simply looking at business cycles loses much of the detail of the extent of co-movement in different frequency cycles within the euro area.