This report examines the performance of the Public Employment Service (PES) and the effectiveness of activation strategies in Finland. It covers the role of the key actors, the placement function of the PES, the structure of out-of-work benefits and...

This document provides a first comparative overview of the presence and outcomes of the children of immigrants in the labour markets of OECD countries, based on a collection of data from 16 OECD countries with large immigrant populations. Its key...

This survey summarises the insights that the new literature based on subjective data has shed on the issue of income inequality and income comparisons. It reviews the various channels that relate income distribution and subjective well-being. It...

In the economic literature there is an increasing interest in the process of job creation and destruction as well of hirings and separations. Many studies suggest that idiosyncratic firm-level characteristics shape both job and worker flows in a...

Evidence from many OECD countries shows that immigrants, in particular recent arrivals, tend to be especially affected by an economic downturn. The available tentative evidence on unemployment suggests that this is also the case in Norway in the...

The question whether a socially mobile society is conducive to subjective well-being (SWB) has rarely been investigated. This paper fills this gap by analyzing the SWB effects of intergenerational earnings mobility and equality in education at the...

This paper first presents information on trends and composition of social expenditure across the OECD. Gross public social expenditure on average across OECD increased from 16% of GDP in 1980 to 21% in 2005, of which public pensions (7% of GDP) and...

Special pensions for workers in hazardous or arduous jobs have long been a feature of the pension landscape and, recently, they are the subject of a great deal of debate in the pension arenas of many OECD countries. Such pensions are historically...

This paper derives school-to-work transition pathways in the United States and Europe between the late 1990s and the early 2000s. To do so, it uses Optimal Matching, a technique developed to sequence DNA. The key advantage of using this technique is...

This paper presents updated estimates of the OECD employment protection indicators for 30 OECD countries and 10 emerging economies and considers important aspects of employment protection other than those provided in legislation. Collective...

This report presents the results of a first attempt to create a framework for assessing the performance of national family policies. The report is part of a joint EU and OECD project, which aims to help the EU Government Expert Group on Demographic...

The current financial and economic crisis has highlighted the importance of investment risk for pension systems. In particular, the dramatic spread of defined-contribution pension provision around the world means that investment risk has a direct...

The paper describes Chile’s pension reform of 1980, which replaced the existing pay-as-you-go public pension programs by a new funded pension program managed by private companies (the “AFP´s”). It comments on the main results of this reform so far,...

This report aims to outline the main trends in income distribution and poverty in Chile, as well as the role of social policy in these areas. The report includes five sections. First, it discusses recent trends in income inequality and poverty,...

The self-employed workers make up a small but significant minority of the workforce in many OECD countries. Moreover, transitions into and out of self-employment have become much more common for a larger group of workers. It is therefore of critical...

This paper uses repeated cross-section data ISSP data from 1989, 1997 and 2005 to consider movements in job quality. It is first underlined that not having a job when you want one is a major source of low well-being. Second, job values have remained...

This paper addresses the causal impact of being raised in a sole-parent family on child well-being across the OECD. The question is answered by a cross-OECD meta-analysis and a literature review. There are widely varying rates of sole parenthood...

The twin problem of in-work poverty and persistent labour market difficulties of low-skilled individuals has been one of the most important drivers of tax-benefit policy reforms in OECD countries in recent years. Employment-conditional cash transfers...

This report describes the organisation of employment services, labour market programmes, unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and social assistance in Poland according to the legislation that was in force until January 2009, when the Act on...

La plupart des pays de l’OCDE s’attendent à des pénuries croissantes de travailleurs qualifiés dans les prochaines deux décennies, et l’immigration pourrait bien être une des réponses à ce phénomène. Ces dernières années, ils ont mis en place des...