The paper reviews trends in health-care expenditure and assesses the main forces underlying the increase since 1960. It then describes and evaluates various health-care reforms. The report argues that top-down budget controls appear to have had some success in reducing the growth in health-care...

This paper provides new projections on the fiscal impact of age-related spending for OECD countries over the next half century. These results are based on national models using an agreed upon set of assumptions about macroeconomic and demographic developments for all countries. Recent reforms to...

In Finland, as in most OECD countries, the ageing of the population is one of the major long-term policy challenges. This paper first explores the scale of the demographic changes in Finland, the relevant institutions and their effect on the decision to retire. In light of the increase in the...

This study reviews health-system reforms in OECD countries over the past several decades and their impact on the following policy goals: ensuring access to services; improving the <I>quality</I> of care and its outcomes; allocating an “appropriate” level of resources to health care (<I>macroeconomic...</i></i>

Since the early 1980s, most OECD countries have embarked on medium-term strategies to restore greater balance to the public finances and to wind back government intervention in the economy. The attached paper examines the progress so far. It also reviews and evaluates some of the changes to...

This paper provides a synthesis of age-related developments and policies for a range of OECD countries, drawing on recent OECD work. It describes the expected impact of ageing on expenditure and fiscal pressures taking into account the current configuration of age-related policies. Since later...

This working paper presents evidence on changes in income distribution and poverty in thirteen OECD countries over the two decades up to the first half of the 1990s. While country experience has been variable, income and poverty rose in most countries. Both earnings and capital and self...

This study examines the dynamics of poverty for four OECD countries (Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States). It provides information on patterns of poverty, which groups stay in poverty the longest, and household/individual characteristics and life-course events which appear...