The economic crisis that started in 2008 has had a profound impact on the lives of citizens. Millions of people lost their job, saw their life-savings disappear and experienced prolonged financial hardship. The economic crisis has also led a number of OECD governments to introduce austerity...

This paper assesses the extent to which the increase in women’s human capital, as measured by educational attainment, has contributed to economic growth in OECD countries over the past five decades. Using cross-country/time series data covering 30 countries from 1960 to 2008 on education (the...

Previous research has shown that fathers taking some time off work around childbirth, especially periods of leave of 2 or more weeks, are more likely to be involved in childcare related activities than fathers who do not do so. Furthermore, evidence suggests that children with fathers who are...

This paper presents new information on trends in family and child outcomes and policies over the past decades, in order to assess whether there has been any convergence over time across OECD and EU countries. Important drivers of population structure such as life expectancy and fertility rates...

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 similar way in all countries. Others argue that...

More mothers with young children are in paid work than in the past. There is a long-running debate on possible negative effects of maternal employment on child development. For the first time, this paper presents an initial comparative analysis of longitudinal data on maternal employment...

Part I of this paper first presents information on trends and composition of social expenditure as in the OECD Social Expenditure database for the years 1980 – 2007. Over this period, public social expenditure as a percentage of GDP, on average across OECD, increased from 15.6% to 19.2%....

The paper starts with a brief look at social expenditure patterns and the importance of different social policy areas, in particular the role of social assistance policy within social protection systems. It then looks at the objectives of social assistance policy and considers payment-rates in...

<OL><LI>The OECD regularly produces estimates of tax burdens and benefit entitlements for a range of “typical household” situations. The results of these calculations (published in the <I>Benefits and Wages</I> and <I>Taxing Wages</I> series) are frequently used to compare countries’ tax-benefit systems and to...</i></i></li></ol>

This is the 2005 edition of a Net Social Expenditure paper that contains information on net (after tax) public and private social expenditure. These indicators supplement the detailed historical information on gross (before tax) publicly mandated social expenditure in the OECD Social Expenditure...