Work is both an essential part of our daily lives and one of the major policy concerns across Europe. Yet the public debate of labour issues is all too often driven by political rhetoric and short-term concerns. In this volume, researchers from seven European countries explain, in accessible...

During the last 15 years, postcommunist countries have undergone dramatic changes in their economic and social policies. Major policy reforms have been sometimes enacted with apparent consensus, but were frequently highly controversial. In this paper, we examine whether the degree of consensus...

The paper is concerned with the issue of how the postsocialist new member states of the European Union fit into the established methodologies of worlds and varieties of welfare capitalism. The paper argues that the postsocialist welfare state is different from the welfare states of the old...

Adult learning is seen as a key factor for enhancing employment, innovation and growth, and it should concern all age cohorts. The aim of this paper is to understand the points in the life cycle at which adult learning takes place and whether it leads to reaching a medium or high level of...

This paper analyses job advertisements posted on the public EU portal EURES to identify the specific skills and characteristics that are demanded in the European labour market in selected low- and medium-skilled occupations and in different sectors. This research is innovative in exploring...

This paper analyses job advertisements to identify the specific skills and characteristics that are demanded in the Slovak labour market in selected low- and medium-skilled occupations in different sectors. It is innovative in exploring online job advertisement data and in quantifying the...

In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social stratification through educational policies, and which countries put greater emphasis on intervening in the stratification process. First, we examine the relationship between education and welfare...

With higher education increasingly available to young people regardless of their socioeconomic status, the question “what to study” is steadily replacing “whether to study” as the key question facing students today. This paper examines, in a comparative and methodologically innovative...

The effect of specific education policies, such as ability grouping, preschool attendance on educational outcomes and equity has been the subject of much scholarly and political debate. Our paper adds to this debate by examining the association between such policies and equity for children of...

This study reviews conceptual and empirical literature studying low-skilled and proposes more comprehensive and dynamic conceptualization of low-skillness. Our work is based on analysing the sources of being and of becoming low-skilled by reviewing structural processes underlying changes in...