Economic theory suggests that unemployment could affect human capital investment decisions in either direction. The authors use microdata on sixteen year-olds from the U.K. Family Expenditure Survey to examine the effects of household circumstances and regional unemployment rates on early school...

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...

Some people make great claims about the advantages to be gained from greater reliance on the private sector for the provision of social protection. Many of the claims for great macroeconomic advantages do not stand up to scrutiny. However, there is some reason hope that private provision might...

Cette étude exploite des données permettant des comparaisons internationales de la distribution des revenus entre les ménages. Elle a pour objectif d’identifier des faits bien établis, aptes à se substituer aux conjectures et suppositions qui, trop souvent, prédominent dans les débats...

Les dépenses sociales publiques s’élèvent à 25 pour cent du PIB, voire plus dans certains pays. Des dépenses d’une telle ampleur ont très vraisemblablement quelque effet sur la croissance, mais les avis divergent quant au sens dans lequel s’exerce cet effet. A partir de nouvelles...

Public social expenditure accounts for 25 per cent of GDP, or even more in some countries. That expenditure on this scale has some effect on growth seems very likely, but the direction of the effect is disputed by different schools of thought. Using new data sources and panel data econometric...

This article uses internationally-comparable data on the distribution of income across households to identify some well-founded facts to replace the conjecture and supposition which too often dominate discussions on inequality and poverty. There has been a general trend in nearly all OECD...

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 to individuals facing particular...