The economic crisis that started in 2008 has had a profound impact on the lives of citizens. Millions of people lost their job, saw their life-savings disappear and experienced prolonged financial hardship. The economic crisis has also led a number of OECD governments to introduce austerity...

Health services account for a large and increasing share of production and expenditure in OECD and Eurostat countries but there are also noticeable differences between countries in expenditure per capita. Whether such differences are due to more services being consumed or whether they reflect...

This paper provides a description of the classification systems used to measure hospital services in selected OECD countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom (England), and the United States. Three classifications are relevant: those on diagnoses; on procedures; and on...

Concerns about health expenditure growth and its long-term sustainability have stimulated the development of health expenditure forecasting models in many OECD countries. This comparative analysis reviewed 25 models that were developed by, or used for, policy analysis by OECD member countries...

The twin problem of in-work poverty and persistent labour market difficulties of low-skilled individuals has been one of the most important drivers of tax-benefit policy reforms in OECD countries in recent years. Employment-conditional cash transfers to individuals facing particular...

<OL><LI>Some people make great claims about the advantages to be gained from greater reliance on the private sector for the provision of social protection. Many of the claims for great macroeconomic advantages do not stand up to scrutiny. However, there is some reason to hope that private provision...</li></ol>

Health services account for a large and increasing share of production and expenditure in OECD countries but there are also noticeable differences between countries in expenditure per capita. Whether such differences are due to more services consumed in some countries than in others or whether...

This paper reports on a project to improve the comparability and availability of private health expenditure under the joint health accounts questionnaire (JHAQ) data collection. The JHAQ is a framework for joint data collection in the area of health expenditure data developed by OECD, Eurostat,...

The OECD Social Expenditure data base (SOCX) allows the monitoring of trends in aggregate social expenditure and changes in its composition. But aggregate social expenditure may sometimes fail to reflect the true ‘effort’ of a country in providing social support. Account needs to be taken of...

<OL><LI>Economic growth is, ultimately, the result of the myriad of transactions which take place in a market economy. Similarly, the distribution of income depends on who has ownership of factors of production, how much they can sell them for, and whether the resultant income is redistributed or not....</li></ol>