Policies designed to advance the march toward private financing and delivery of social services follow five main pathways. While some of these approaches to privatization are more direct and transparent than others, all may be pursued simultaneously....

To reduce the incidence of very long working hours, Korea is gradually implementing a major working-time reform, which lowers the statutory limit on total weekly working hours from 68 to 52 between 2018-2021. This paper provides a preliminary...

This paper is part of the joint project between the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission and the OECD’s Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs on “Review of Labour Migration Policy in Europe”....

OECD countries are increasingly interested in structuring government organisation and the financing of job brokerage and employment reintegration services to use market forces. In the Netherlands, the introduction of market mechanisms has been part...

In this paper, we study the dynamics of social assistance benefit receipt in Germany using annual survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1995-2011. Rates of benefit receipt were stable in Germany at around 8% in the...

We model the dynamics of social assistance benefit receipt in Britain using data from the British Household Panel Survey, waves 1–15. First, we discuss definitions of social assistance benefit receipt, and present information about the trends between...

This paper is part of the joint project between the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission and the OECD’s Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs on “Review of Labour Migration Policy in Europe”....

According to the World Health Organization, depression is the highest ranking cause of disease in middle- and high income countries; it costs Europe around EUR 118 billion a year, mostly through lost productivity on the labour market, i.e. labour...

This paper is part of the joint project between the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission and the OECD’s Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs on “Review of Labour Migration Policy in Europe”....

Foreign direct investment (FDI) by OECD-based multinational enterprises (MNEs) in developing and emerging economies has increased dramatically over the past two decades. While generally perceived as beneficial for local development, it has also...

This paper is part of the joint project between the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission and the OECD’s Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs on “Review of Labour Migration Policy in Europe”....

Although new mothers are more likely than ever to be in the labour force, the time around childbirth is a dynamic one, with women quitting work altogether or changing jobs to accommodate the demands of their infants. The passage of Family and Medical...

This paper looks at how the income distribution in countries changes when the value of publicly-provided services to households is included. We consider five major categories of public services: education, health care, social housing, childcare and...

This paper is part of the joint project between the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission and the OECD’s Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs on “Review of Labour Migration Policy in Europe”....

The current situation regarding the integration of immigrants in the labour market in Sweden is the consequence of a number of factors and developments. The past fifteen years have seen a higher share of humanitarian migration in Sweden than in the...

This report looks at the extent to which household net worth and disposable income are correlated across individuals. After having briefly discussed the importance of better information on household wealth for social policies, the paper describes the...

This paper analyses the impact of unemployment insurance and severance pay on the duration of nonemployment and transitions from non-employment to formal salaried employment, informal salaried employment and self-employment. It makes use of panel...

Switzerland is among the OECD countries with the largest immigrant populations – 27% of the working-age population are foreign-born – and the issue of immigration is high on both the policy agenda and in the public debate. Given the numerous debates...

With 17% of the working-age population in 2010 being foreign-born, Austria has one of the largest shares of working-age immigrants in the OECD. As in other European OECD countries, the migration landscape in Austria has been shaped by the recruitment...

The labour market integration of immigrants in Australia is shaped by the country’s long tradition as an immigration country and its selection policy. Over the post-war period, the main origin countries of immigration to Australia have shifted from...