Main OECD Social Policy Activities in 2006-2007

Employment-oriented social policies

Family Policies www.oecd.org/els/social/family

The OECD Family database presents indicators concerning families and children in one central statistics portal. An initial wave of indicators went on-line at the end of 2006, mainly building upon work already developed in the Babies and Bosses reviews and other OECD existing databases. Expansion of the Family database will be an on-going process and throughout 2007 existing indicators will be updated and new ones published as validated information becomes available.

Making Work Pay (ongoing) www.oecd.org/els/social/workincentives

Unemployment and related benefits help prevent those without work from falling into poverty, but at the same time risk leaving little financial gain from working. The main output of this activity is the publication of information on in-work and out-of-work net incomes of individuals of working age in the Benefits and Wages series (a fifth issue is now available). The results are used to assess and compare financial work incentives as well as income adequacy across OECD countries. The main results, as well as the underlying calculation models, are available for download from the above website.
Recently, available evidence on childcare fees and benefits has been integrated into the analysis. Building on these developments, a working paper entitled "Can Parents Afford To Work?" has been published in the OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper series and updated results will be presented in the 2007 edition of Benefits and Wages. In addition, several related reports have been published in 2006 or are due to be released in 2007: "Welfare Reform In Europe: A Microsimulation Analysis" (published also in the Economic Journal, vol. 117), "An Age Perspective on Economic Well-Being and Social Protection in Nine OECD Countries", "Minimum Wages, Minimum Labour Costs and the Tax Treatment of Low-wage Employment", and "Household Incomes and Redistribution in the European Union: Quantifying the Equalising Properties of Taxes and Benefits" (published also in: Papadimitriou, D.B. (ed.), The Distributional Effects of Government Spending and Taxation, Palgrave MacMillan 2006).

Policies to support and integrate the disabled of working age www.oecd.org/els/disability

Disability policy has become a key policy area in most OECD countries. Transforming Disability into Ability, published in 2003, concluded that a promising new disability policy approach should move closer to the philosophy of unemployment programmes. The new thematic review on Reforming Sickness and Disability Policies to Improve Work Incentives aims to reach a better understanding of the mechanisms and policies that lead a person with a health problem or a disability to withdraw from the labour market. The first volume of this review covered Norway, Poland and Switzerland and has been published in November 2006. Currently, the second volume is under preparation covering Australia, Luxembourg, Spain and the United Kingdom and scheduled for publication in Autumn 2007. The ongoing review suggests that the way countries are dealing with people with a partially-reduced work capacity is changing.

Monitoring social policy

Pension system monitoring (ongoing) www.oecd.org/els/social/ageing

This project aims to monitor the functioning of pension systems, evaluate the impact of pension reforms, and compare policies across member countries. The first edition of the report Pensions at a Glance was published in 2005. The 2007 edition updates in depth information on the key features of mandatory pension systems - both public and private - in the 30 OECD countries, including projections of retirement income for today's workers.

Development of social indicators www.oecd.org/els/social/indicators/SAG

The last edition of Society at a Glance - OECD Social Indicators was published in 2007. Social indicators provide a concise overview of social trends and policies while paying due attention to the different national conditions in which such policies are being pursued. The social indicators in Society at a Glance may be represented along a two-dimensional classification. The first dimension corresponds to three main goals of social policy, i.e. self-sufficiency, equity and social cohesion. The second dimension corresponds to the nature of the indicators, i.e. social context, social status and societal responses.

This edition includes a wide range of information on social issues including demography, family characteristics, employment, working mothers, out-of-work replacement rates, poverty persistence, social expenditure, health care expenditure, subjective well-being and suicides. This report also includes a "guide" to help readers in understanding the structure of OECD social indicators and an attempt to take stock of the role of social indicators for the broader agenda of measuring the well-being of OECD citizens and societies.

Resource Distribution www.oecd.org/els/social/inequality

OECD work on this theme has included a first assessment of the comparative evidence on non-monetary measures of poverty, as well as research on the redistributive effects of in-kind government services and on integenerational mobility in income and other social characteristics. On the policy side, work has focused on assessing what work best in reducing child poverty and on the role of educational experiences for social disadvantage. An update of data on income distribution and poverty, covering all 30 OECD countries around 2005, is currently ongoing, with first results expected to become available at the end of 2007. An OECD report, taking stock of various activities recently undertaken on the theme of resource distribution, is planned for mid-2008.

Asian regional center for health and social policy

The Joint OECD/Korea Regional Centre on Health and Social Policy (RCHSP) aims to develop data capacity in co-operation with individual country experts and international partners as the Asian Development Bank, The Asia Pacific National Health Accounts Network (APNHAN), the International Labour Organisation, the WorldBank, and the World Health Organisation. The Centre also organises seminars, conferences, and workshops to foster the exchange of technical information and policy experiences.