This paper examines wage setting mechanisms for health workers in hospitals across eight different OECD countries. It describes similarities and differences and how fixed or fluid these approaches have been in recent years through health system reforms, labour market dynamics and economic...

Doctors are distributed unequally across different regions in virtually all OECD countries, and this causes concern about how to continue to ensure access to health services everywhere. In particular access to services in rural regions is the focus of attention of policymakers, although in some...

Part I of this paper first presents information on trends and composition of social expenditure as in the OECD Social Expenditure database for the years 1980 – 2007. Over this period, public social expenditure as a percentage of GDP, on average across OECD, increased from 15.6% to 19.2%....

Nurses are usually the most numerous professionals in the healthcare workforce, and their contribution is a core component in attaining the policy objectives of improved productivity, quality of care and effectiveness in the health sector. The recent global economic crisis, and its related...

More mothers with young children are in paid work than in the past. There is a long-running debate on possible negative effects of maternal employment on child development. For the first time, this paper presents an initial comparative analysis of longitudinal data on maternal employment...

This paper assesses the extent to which the increase in women’s human capital, as measured by educational attainment, has contributed to economic growth in OECD countries over the past five decades. Using cross-country/time series data covering 30 countries from 1960 to 2008 on education (the...

Previous research has shown that fathers taking some time off work around childbirth, especially periods of leave of 2 or more weeks, are more likely to be involved in childcare related activities than fathers who do not do so. Furthermore, evidence suggests that children with fathers who are...

This paper presents new information on trends in family and child outcomes and policies over the past decades, in order to assess whether there has been any convergence over time across OECD and EU countries. Important drivers of population structure such as life expectancy and fertility rates...