Main OECD Social Policy Activities

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 is an on-going process. By the end of 2008, we had published new indicators on the structure of families, public policies for families and children, and child outcomes. On 30 June 2009, existing indicators were updated and new ones published on the labour market position of families and child outcomes. There are currently 52 indicators available on-line.

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 latest 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 here.

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 are presented in the 2007 edition of Benefits and Wages. In addition, several related reports have been published in 2006/2007: 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 “Sickness, Disability and Work: Breaking the Barriers” 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, published in 2006, covered Norway, Poland and Switzerland. The second volume covering Australia, Luxembourg, Spain and the United Kingdom, and the third volume covering Denmark, Finland, Ireland and the Netherlands, were published in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Swedish disability policies have been reviewed in early 2009.

A synthesis report and a conference will be carried out in 2009. The High-Level Policy Forum on “Sickness and Disability Policy Challenges in OECD Countries” was jointly organised by the Swedish Government and the OECD in Stockholm on 14-15 May 2009.

Monitoring social policy

Child Well-being www.oecd.org/els/social/childwellbeing

In recent years UNICEF IRC, the OECD and the European Commission have all been active in child well-being research. Although advances have been made in terms of the methods used to operationalise child well-being across countries, there remains the need for a clear consensus on which indicators economically advanced countries should use to monitor the well-being of their children. A Child Well-being Expert Consultation took place at the OECD in Paris at the end of May 2009, with the purpose of developing a shared understanding of a set of data that countries should monitor in order to inform policies for children’s well-being. The OECD will release a new publication on child well-being indicators early September 2009.

Pension System Monitoring (ongoing) www.oecd.org/els/social/pensions

This project aims to monitor the functioning of pension systems, evaluate the impact of pension reforms, and compare policies across member countries. Pension and retirement policies have changed dramatically in recent years, as governments have tried to balance the goals of adequate retirement incomes and the long-term financial sustainability of pension systems in the face of population ageing. The first edition of Pensions at a Glance was published in 2005, and the second edition in 2007. The latest edition Pensions at a Glance 2009 updates information on key features of pension provision in OECD countries and provides projections of retirement income for today’s workers. It offers an expanded range of indicators, including measures of assets, investment performance, coverage of private pensions, public pension spending, and the demographic context and outlook.

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

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.

The 2009 edition includes a wide range of information on social issues – such as demography and family characteristics, employment and unemployment, poverty and inequality, social and health care expenditure, and work and life satisfaction – as well as a guide to help readers understand the structure of OECD social indicators. In addition to updating some of the indicators from previous editions, Society at a Glance 2009 - OECD Social Indicators adds several new and innovative social indicators, including adult height, perceived health status, risky youth behaviour and bullying. For the first time, the report also provides a condensed set of headline social indicators summarising social well-being in OECD countries. In addition, a special chapter examines leisure time across the OECD.

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 intergenerational mobility in income and other social characteristics. On the policy side, work has focused on assessing what works 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 and historical data for the majority of OECD countries was made available during 2008.

The OECD report Growing Unequal?: Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries, analysing long-term trends in income distribution and poverty in OECD countries, was published in October 2008.

Asian Policy Centre - Health and Social Policy www.oecdkorea.org/main_eng.asp

The Joint OECD/Korea Policy Centre opened its doors in July 2008. It resulted from the integration of 4 pre-existing OECD/Korea Centres, among which the former Regional Centre on Health and Social Policy (RCHSP). The Centre 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 organises seminars, conferences and workshops to foster the exchange of technical information and policy experiences in the area of pension reforms, social expenditure and health accounting.

During the 2007/2008 biennium, in the area of social policy, the Centre organised an OECD-Korea Centre/ADB conference on Social Protection Index for Committed Poverty Reduction (December 2007) and a follow-up ADB/ILO/OECD Korea Policy Centre meeting on Social Policy Indicators’ Experts in Asia (November 2008). A publication Society at a Glance Asia will be released in summer 2009. On pensions, the Centre organised a joint  OECD/Korea Centre and World Bank international conference on Pension Reform in Asia and the Pacific (25-26 June 2008). The publication Pensions at a Glance - Asia/Pacific was launched at the conference and released in January 2009.