Grâce à un système de protection sociale très développé, le taux de pauvreté moyen est peu élevé en France. Toutefois, comme dans d’autres pays, la pauvreté est fortement concentrée dans certains quartiers. Leurs habitants sont confrontés à de nombreux handicaps sur le plan social...

Despite significant increases in spending on child care and education during the last decade, PISA scores suggest that educational performance remains static, uneven and strongly related to parents’ income and background. Better educational performance could improve labour market outcomes,...

South Africa has achieved remarkable progress in educational attainment relative to other emerging countries, but the quality of basic education for a large fraction of the Black African population is still very low. This study identifies several hurdles to the upgrading of basic education...

The NZ labour market is among the most flexible in the OECD, and outcomes for its young people have been among the best. However, labour-market opportunities are heavily determined by initial education, where New Zealand’s system is also successful and innovative in many ways. Average PISA...

While Japan has achieved outstanding scores on the PISA exams, further improving educational outcomes is important to sustain growth in the face of rapid population ageing. The government should step up investment in early childhood education and care and integrate childcare and kindergarten to...

Overall, the education system fares well by international comparison. Slovenia has one of the highest shares of the population aged 25 to 64 to have completed at least upper secondary education, and ranks high in international educational achievement tests. Nevertheless, in some areas, reforms...

Korea’s low youth employment rate has negative consequences for the young people concerned and the economy as a whole. Raising youth employment is a priority, particularly as Korea faces the most rapid population ageing among OECD countries. Low youth employment is due to a mismatch between...

Accumulating debt raises concerns about its implications for macroeconomic stability. This paper sheds light on the implications of high indebtedness for the macroeconomic volatility by identifying the main drivers of the evolution of debt in a set of countries. The country choice was based on...

The recent reform of the Stability and Growth Pact provides more leeway for EU governments to temporarily breach the 3% deficit limit if this facilitates the implementation of initially expensive reforms. But the implementation of this principle is not obvious as budgets would need to specify...

Portugal’s fiscal policy has failed to durably reduce the deficit below the Stability and Growth Pact threshold of 3% of GDP and was submitted to the excessive deficit procedure of the EU Commission for a second time in 2005. The paper describes fiscal developments in Portugal over the past...