Focus on social challenges

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on lives and livelihoods around the world. Many countries have taken unprecedented measures to extend social safety nets, especially for vulnerable groups such as low-income households, children and young people, women, low-skilled workers, part-time or temporary workers, and the self-employed.

This page features the latest OECD data, recommendations and policy advice regarding the impact of COVID-19 on social protection, jobs, education and skills, and well-being, as well as a curated collection of earlier OECD social content.

 

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07/09/2020

Schools, education and COVID-19

In the first half of 2020, 188 countries temporarily closed their schools to slow down the spread of COVID-19, affecting more than 1.5 billion young people. Many school re-openings since then have continued to be disrupted by the virus. What are the trade-offs between getting kids back to school and keeping communities healthy? How can schools adapt to the coronavirus? And will this virus radically and permanently change the way we learn and teach?

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07/07/2020

Facing the jobs crisis

From the very first stages of the health crisis, most countries put into place an unprecedented package of labour market and social policies to reduce the economic shock and support workers, their families and companies. This initial assessment presents an overview of these emergency measures, reviews the labour market consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting economic crisis, and points to directions for further policy adaptation as countries move out of lockdown.

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Facing the jobs crisis

06/07/2020

Safeguarding workers and firms

Unemployment has soared in the OECD area since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Policymakers have taken action to safeguard workers and firms, but as the coronavirus crisis continues, more targeted action will be needed to stop the jobs crisis from becoming a social crisis.

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Safeguarding workers and firms

See our latest policy advice

This new series brings together data, analysis and recommendations on a range of topics related to the impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on people and livelihoods

Access to all policy responses

Strengthening online learning when schools are closed: The role of families and teachers in supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 crisis has forced education systems worldwide to find alternatives to face-to-face instruction. As a result, online teaching and learning have been used by teachers and students on an unprecedented scale. Since lockdowns –...
24/09/2020
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Response, recovery and prevention in the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in developing countries: Women and girls on the frontlines

This policy brief focuses on how to ensure that a gender lens is well-integrated through response, recovery, and prevention efforts to COVID-19 in development co-operation. In the context of COVID-19, how can OECD countries and...
22/09/2020
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Combatting COVID-19's effect on children

The COVID-19 pandemic is harming health, social and material well-being of children worldwide, with the poorest children, including homeless children and children in detention, hit hardest. School closures, social distancing and confinement increase the risk...
11/08/2020
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Job retention schemes during the COVID-19 lockdown and beyond

Job retention (JR) schemes have been one of the main policy tools used by a number of OECD countries to contain the employment and social fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. By May 2020, JR schemes...
03/08/2020
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Discover other original data visualisations related to the COVID-19 crisis in Data Insights

Browse all related resources

From childcare and elderly support to housing and food security, this collection focuses on people and livelihoods. It pulls together OECD analysis and data spanning a multitude of issues related to social protection and inequalities, many of which are being challenged in the context of the global coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis.

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22/10/2020
Report
Governance for Youth, Trust and Intergenerational Justice
Global transformations – from population ageing to digitalisation, rising inequalities and climate change – have created profound uncertainties for young people and future generations, despite unprecedented access to information, education and technology. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing challenges in youth’s mental well-being and employment, while raising concerns about the sustainability of public finances.This report provides the first comparative assessment of the policies, laws, institutional capacities and governance tools put in place by 42 national governments and the European Union to promote youth empowerment and intergenerational justice. It sets benchmarks for cross-country comparisons in three main areas: 1) Supporting youth’s transition to an autonomous life, 2) Enhancing youth’s participation and representation in public life as well as trust in government, and 3) Delivering fair policy outcomes for all generations. Finally, it provides practical insights for policy makers, civil society and young people seeking to build a present and future that leaves no generation behind.
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22/10/2020
Report
PISA 2018 Results (Volume VI)
The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines what students know in reading, mathematics and science, and what they can do with what they know. It provides the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student learning outcomes to date. Results from PISA indicate the quality and equity of learning outcomes attained around the world, and allow educators and policy makers to learn from the policies and practices applied in other countries. This is one of six volumes that present the results of the PISA 2018 survey, the seventh round of the triennial assessment. Volume VI: Are Students Ready to Thrive in an Interconnected World? explores students’ ability to examine issues of local, global and cultural significance; understand and appreciate the perspectives and worldviews of others; engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions across cultures; and take action for collective well-being and sustainable development. The volume explores students’ outcomes on the cognitive test and corresponding questionnaire in addition to their experiences of global and intercultural learning at school and beyond.
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19/10/2020
Report
International Migration Outlook 2020
The 2020 edition of International Migration Outlook analyses recent developments in migration movements and policies in OECD countries and some non-member countries, and looks at the evolution of the labour market outcomes of immigrants in OECD countries. It includes a special chapter on the impact of migration on the structural composition of the economy. It also includes country notes and a statistical annex.
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15/10/2020
Report
Education in the Digital Age
The COVID-19 pandemic was a forceful reminder that education plays an important role in delivering not just academic learning, but also in supporting physical and emotional well-being. Balancing traditional “book learning” with broader social and personal development means new roles for schools and education more generally.This volume is part of a series that examines the intersections between education, well-being and digital technologies. Complementing the first volume Educating 21st Century Children: Emotional Well-Being in the Digital Age, this volume turns the spotlight on physical health and well-being. It explores the important role of play and risk-taking in learning. It examines the “pursuit of perfection” and the impact on children’s lives, whether it be physical, cognitive or academic. It highlights important efforts countries have made to tackle inequality and protect and empower students in both physical and digital environments. It ends with a look at the pending agenda, underscoring the role of partnerships, policy and protection.
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15/10/2020
Report
Sustainable Reintegration of Returning Migrants
For many OECD countries, how to ensure the safe and dignified return to their origin countries of migrants who do not have grounds to remain is a key question. Alongside removal, return and reintegration assistance have become an integral part of the response. Development cooperation is expanding its activity to support the capacity of countries of origin to reintegrate all returning migrants.Sustainable Reintegration of Returning Migrants: A Better Homecoming reports the results of a multi-country peer review project carried out by the OECD, with support from the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It examines factors that can help improve the sustainability of reintegration at the individual level and at the programme level in countries of destination and origin. The report examines how casework and community-based programmes can increase uptake and improve outcomes. It identifies key elements of an effective individual reintegration programme, including outreach and counselling, case management and referral, and partnerships. The report makes proposals about how to improve programme design, evaluation, and monitoring, indicating areas where countries could co-operate more in implementation of programmes and in coordination with origin countries.
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05/10/2020
Report
Rural Well-being
Rural Well-being: Geography of Opportunities presents the latest iteration on this policy framework, reflecting several important changes in rural development in recent years. Fully taking into account the variety of situations characterising rural regions, the new policy framework leverages improved data and analysis while broadening the scope from economic focus to encompass the environmental and social dimensions of well-being. The new approach places the well-being of citizens at the forefront of its objective and recognises the diversity of rural places brought by a deeper understanding of their diverse and complex socio-economic systems and their connection to cities. The framework also looks to the future and unfolding megatrends such as globalisation, digitalisation, climate change and demographic change. It reflects on how these will impact rural economies and reviews policy options to mitigate the challenges and capitalise on opportunities as well as to develop resilience against emerging crises. Finally, recognising the strong interdependencies between different stakeholders and the need for partnerships between government, the private sector and civil society to successfully implement policies, the Rural Well-being Policy Framework focuses on governance mechanisms, including the OECD Principles on Rural Policy.
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29/09/2020
Report
PISA 2018 Results (Volume V)
The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines what students know in reading, mathematics and science, and what they can do with what they know. It provides the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student learning outcomes to date. Results from PISA indicate the quality and equity of learning outcomes attained around the world, and allow educators and policy makers to learn from the policies and practices applied in other countries. This is one of six volumes that present the results of the PISA 2018 survey, the seventh round of the triennial assessment. Volume V, Effective Policies, Successful Schools, analyses schools and school systems and their relationship with education outcomes more generally. The volume covers school governance, selecting and grouping students, and the human, financial, educational and time resources allocated to teaching and learning. Trends in these indicators are examined when comparable data are available.
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29/09/2020
Paper
Were schools equipped to teach – and were students ready to learn – remotely?
The COVID-19 crisis continues to impact education globally. According to UNESCO in mid-April 2020, 194 countries had closed schools nationwide, affecting almost 1.6 billion learners. By August 2020, there were still 105 country-wide closures affecting over a billion learners. Many educators have worked hard to sustain student learning and well-being. The form, intensity and success of those efforts vary across countries/economies, but digital technologies have emerged as a crucial prerequisite for success. Digital technologies offer the potential to provide new opportunities and alternative approaches for learning. They can shape what people learn, how they learn, where they learn and when they learn and, especially, the type of interactions between teachers and students. However, the COVID-19 crisis arose at a time when most education systems were unprepared to make the most of the potential of digital technologies. This PISA in Focus looks at how prepared schools and students were to be learning remotely.
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24/09/2020
Policy response
Strengthening online learning when schools are closed: The role of families and teachers in supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis
The COVID-19 crisis has forced education systems worldwide to find alternatives to face-to-face instruction. As a result, online teaching and learning have been used by teachers and students on an unprecedented scale. Since lockdowns – either massive or localised - may be needed again in the future to respond to new waves of the infection until a vaccine becomes available, it is of utmost importance for governments to identify which policies can maximise the effectiveness of online learning. This policy brief examines the role of students’ attitudes towards learning in maximising the potential of online schooling when regular face-to-face instruction cannot take place. Since parents and teachers play a fundamental role in supporting students to develop these crucial attitudes, particularly in the current situation, targeted policy interventions should be designed with the aim of reducing the burden on parents and help teachers and schools make the most of digital learning.
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23/09/2020
Paper
Mapping policy approaches and practices for the inclusion of students with special education needs
Across OECD countries, there are various and diverse policy approaches in place to promote inclusive education systems for students with special education needs (SEN), understood as learning disabilities, physical impairments and disorders related to mental health. Analysing current policies in place across OECD countries and investigating advantages and disadvantages of diverse policy approaches for students with SEN is important when acknowledging non-negligible disparities in terms of enrolment, graduation, and employment outcomes for students with SEN across OECD countries. Overall, educational approaches to address students with SEN have historically shifted from placing students in special school settings to more mainstream education environments. However, differences still exist in the extent to which students are mainstreamed in schools with the rest of the students. Furthermore, education systems differ in the way they design and implement governance arrangements, resourcing systems, capacity-building, school-level interventions, and monitoring and evaluation of their policies in place to support students with SEN. Through a holistic approach, the following desk-based research adopts the analytical framework developed by the OECD’s Strength through Diversity project, Education for Inclusive Societies, to map policy approaches to include students with SEN in education systems and promote their well-being. The review also investigates how special education needs intersect with other forms of induced diversity in education systems and other emerging trends across countries to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the issues at stake.
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22/09/2020
Policy response
Response, recovery and prevention in the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in developing countries: Women and girls on the frontlines
This policy brief focuses on how to ensure that a gender lens is well-integrated through response, recovery, and prevention efforts to COVID-19 in development co-operation. In the context of COVID-19, how can OECD countries and other development providers improve the quality of their policies and practices for gender equality, as well as raise investments in gender equality in key sectors? Development partners will need to identify challenges and areas of risk brought about by the pandemic, as well as integrate concerns for gender equality into decision making around issues ranging from economic stimulus packages to redoubling financing and improving policies and practices across a range of sectors. This approach also implies ensuring women’s representation in leadership and decision making at every level when responding to the COVID-19 crisis. This policy brief provides some arguments for why a gender-responsive recovery to COVID-19 is essential for sustainable and inclusive growth, and initial guidance for making improvements in the area of gender equality and development.
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17/09/2020
Report
States of Fragility 2020
States of Fragility 2020 sets a policy agenda for fragility at a critical turning point: the final countdown on Agenda 2030 is at hand, and the pandemic has reversed hard-fought gains. This report examines fragility as a story in two parts: the global state of fragility that existed before COVID-19, and the dramatic impact the pandemic is having on that landscape. It acknowledges the severe reality of fragility in its multidimensionality and complexity. It explores thinking and practice on fragility to propose new ideas on human capital analysis and conflict prevention in order to adapt policy for more resilient outcomes. With a thematic emphasis on peace in fragile contexts, it highlights the important role of peacebuilders, diplomats, and security actors for peace, and builds the case for enhanced complementarity and coherence across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace nexus. It concludes by reconciling theory with practice to explore what it means to work effectively in fragile contexts. Focusing on fragility will be imperative to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies that leave no one behind.
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15/09/2020
Report
Back to the Future of Education
Close your eyes for a second and think of something that happened over the last 20 years and you would have never expected to occur. Be it the pandemic, smart phones or something else, the truth is that the future likes to surprise us.Our world is in a perpetual state of change. There are always multiple versions of the future—some are assumptions, others hopes and fears. To prepare, we have to consider not only the changes that appear most probable, but also the ones that we aren’t expecting. Inspired by the ground-breaking 2001 Schooling for Tomorrow scenarios, this book provides a set of scenarios on the future of schooling, showing not a single path into the future, but many. Using these scenarios can help us identify the opportunities and challenges that these futures could hold for schooling and education more broadly. We can then use those ideas to help us better prepare and act now.Whether parents or students, teachers or educational leaders, researchers or policy makers, this book has been written for all those who want to think about futures that haven’t occurred to play their part in shaping the future that will.
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11/09/2020
Blog article
Scaling-up job opportunities in food systems for youth and women in West Africa
Koffi Zougbédé, Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat (SWAC) explains how and why addressing the challenges of financing, skills development and co-ordination can significantly contribute to the dynamism of off-farm activities and the creation of more decent jobs for women and youth in West Africa.
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10/09/2020
Report
Housing and Inclusive Growth
Housing is key to inclusive growth. It is the biggest spending item of household budgets, the main driver of wealth accumulation and biggest source of debt for most households. Housing and the neighbourhood in which people live also have important implications for individual health, employment and educational outcomes – effects that can begin in childhood and can last a lifetime. Nevertheless, the housing market may also present a barrier to inclusive growth for some groups, such as low-income households, children, youth, seniors and the homeless.The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted even more abruptly just how important housing issues are to people, and prompted governments to introduce a range of emergency housing supports. However, the pandemic has also underscored the need for governments to develop more structural responses to address persistent housing challenges.This report assesses the key underlying pre-COVID-19 housing policy issues and proposes a series of recommendations to support more inclusive housing outcomes. These include measures to address some of the structural barriers to inclusive growth in the housing market, as well as measures to address the specific housing challenges facing vulnerable groups.
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08/09/2020
Report
Education at a Glance 2020
Education at a Glance is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems across OECD countries and a number of partner economies. More than 100 charts and tables in this publication – as well as links to much more available on the educational database – provide key information on the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; access, participation and progression in education; the financial resources invested in education; and teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools.The 2020 edition includes a focus on vocational education and training, investigating participation in vocational education and training at various levels of education, the labour market and social outcomes of vocational graduates as well as the human and financial resources invested in vocational institutions. Two new indicators on how vocational education and training systems differ around the world and on upper secondary completion rate complement this topic. A specific chapter is dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goal 4, and investigates the quality and participation in secondary education.
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02/09/2020
Report
All Hands In? Making Diversity Work for All
OECD societies have become increasingly diverse in the past decades, offering new opportunities if diversity is properly managed. Ensuring that OECD countries are equipped to make the most of diversity by fully utilising all talent among diverse populations and promoting inclusive labour markets is a key challenge. Both businesses and governments are responding to this challenge with policies to strengthen the inclusion of diverse groups in the workplace and labour markets. This report considers five key groups who are widely considered disadvantaged in the labour market and society at large and who often face discrimination based on their group membership: immigrants, their descendants and ethnic minorities; LGBT people; older people; people with disabilities; and women. It assesses: i) how the inclusion of these groups in OECD labour markets has evolved over time, ii) the evidence on how diversity affects economic outcomes; and iii) which policies countries have implemented and what is known about their effectiveness.
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02/09/2020
Blog article
COVID-19: A game changer for the Global South and international co-operation?
Debapriya Bhattacharya, Chair, Southern Voice and Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue, argues that the Global South has a large stake, and an enormous potential role and capacity to ensure global recovery post-COVID.
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01/09/2020
Blog article
COVID-19 and the human development crisis: What have we learnt?
Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office and Mario Pezzini, Director of the OECD Development Centre, explore lessons learnt from the COVID-19 crisis and how to use them going forward to build back better and reduce inequalities.
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18/08/2020
Blog article
Shaping the ‘she-covery’: Using gender inclusive competition policy to build back better
The unfolding health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis have once again thrown the spotlight on the structural inequalities that women in our society face. As governments and societies reflect on how to recover from the crisis and build back better, OECD's Chris Pike looks at the contribution gender inclusive competition policy could make.
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