Due to demographic change an efficient design of publicly funded long-term care services becomes increasingly important. A new law on public care funds (Pflegefondsgesetz) introduced in 2011 gives statutory priority to the extension of mobile home care over residential care. However, according...

The projection of public net expenditure on care services in the Länder (federal states) that are (partially) financed by the social welfare system and the needs-based guaranteed minimum social benefit system takes into account the demographic development, the better health status of elderly...

Public expenditure for long-term care in Austria increased by 50 percent to roughly € 3.3 billion between 1994 and 2006. However, financing long-term care is becoming increasingly difficult due to demographic developments and societal changes. Estimates of future expenditure for long-term care...

International examples clearly demonstrate that a high level of social policy does not necessarily correlate with slow growth rates. Empirical literature shows that incentives of social policy measures that lead to a growth-enhancing education, research and development policy are of utmost...

For the last ten years, the Austrian labour market has been characterised by an increasing number of legal changes, especially in the area of social security law, leading to a diversification of labour market forms. Seen in a European context, the various structures encompassing the labour...

During the last economic boom period, more than half of Austria's hotels and restaurants laboured under staff shortages, and only 31 percent felt unaffected by any personnel deficit. The key factors determining recruiting problems were the growth rate and size of an operation and the share of...

In 2012, 5.6 percent of the Austrian employees supplied 68 million unpaid overtime hours. 1.2 percent of the volume of work remained unpaid in Austria. Two thirds of the unpaid overtime hours were supplied by salaried workers, roughly a fifth by public servants and one eighth by blue-collar...

Compared to eight other European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden, UK), Austria's labour market performance is better than average. In 2008, a higher-than-average share of the working-age population (15 to 64 years) had jobs and the share of the...

In an EU-wide comparison, Austria's overall labour market performance is fairly strong. The employment-to-population ratio is high. Unemployment, income inequality, and at-risk-of-poverty rate are at a rather low level. However, while employment stability is high for the core workforce, there is...

The crisis-ridden countries of southern Europe find themselves in a situation comparable to the one of flagging regions within a country: both are members of a currency union – the euro area in the first case, and the common national currency in the second. In both cases, a key policy...