Benefits and Wages: OECD Indicators

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Results in this series show how social and fiscal policies affect working and unemployed individuals and their families. Unemployment benefits and related out-of-work support help prevent those without work from falling into poverty but can at the same time reduce the incentive to work; this is one of the main dilemmas of social policy. A range of innovative policy measures aim at making work pay while maintaining adequate incomes for those unable to find a job. Benefits and Wages analyses policies in this area and calculates their overall impact on the incomes available to individual families. It compares levels of safety-net benefits across countries, shows how much people have to earn in order to escape poverty, and how much they gain from taking a job.

What's new ?

• September 2009: Making the most of income-support policies in a downturn
  The current downturn is severely testing the adequacy of unemployment benefit systems as the primary safety net for job-losers and their families. This section of chapter 1 of OECD Employment Outlook 2009 considers the scope and generosity of existing income-support policies and asks whether, and how, support measures should be adapted to deal with the challenges occasioned by a severe recession.
• April 2009: Main indicators, country specific files and OECD Tax-Benefit models on tax and benefit systems for the year 2007 (and also for 2001 to 2007) are now available in the Statistics section.Tax/benefits database is now avalaible on OECD.STAT.
• Tables summarizing the main tax-benefit policy features across OECD countries are available on-line.
• The 2007 edition of Benefits and Wages was launched in December 2007. It includes a special chapter on the cost of childcare. See press release "Encouraging employment - OECD countries balance benefits, wages and taxes".
• What would your income be if you became unemployed? What are your financial incentives to work? A new interactive tool to calculate benefit entitlements and tax burdens is now available:

Publications:

(click on the links below to access summaries, key results and charts, and information on how to obtain or browse the publication)

The fifth edition of the series Benefits and Wages: OECD Indicators” (formerly entitled Benefit Systems and Work Incentives) that started in 1998. Also available a  summary of chapters including  selection of tables & charts. See press release. Benefits and Wages 2007 is available from: SourceOECD for subscribing institutions and many libraries OECD Online Bookshop for non-subscribers Government officials can go to OLISnet, under "Publication locator" Password-protected web site for accredited journalists

Tax-Benefit policies:

(These tables summarise the main tax-benefit policy features. Full details for all years are available in the Country chapters. Latest update: April 2009)

• Unemployment benefits (2005)
• Social assistance (2005)
• Housing benefits (2005)
• Family benefits (2005) , (2007)
• Lone-parent benefits (2005), (2007)
• Employment-conditional benefits (2005), (2007)
• Income taxes (2005)
• Social security contributions (2005)
• Tax treatement of benefits (2005)

Statistics:

• Tax-Benefit Calculator
  Interactive tool to simulate household net incomes in and out of work situations
  
• Main Tax-Benefit indicators
  Net replacement rates (NRRs 2001-2007) and gross replacement rates (GRRs 1961-2007)
• Country-specific files
  The analyses draw on detailed country-specific information about tax and benefit systems for 2001 to 2007. These also contain illustrations of how net incomes are calculated in each country
• OECD Tax-Benefit Models
  The models used for computing tax and benefit results in this publication are now available on an “as-is” basis to those interested in using them for research purposes.

For further information, please contact social.contact@oecd.org.

Further statistics by the OECD Social Policy Division: www.oecd.org/els/social/statistics.